Soma Cube

SOMA CUBE The Danish Author Piet Hein conceived the idea of the SOMA cube in 1936, during a lecture of Quantum physics by Werner Heisenberg (Father of the un-certain principle). When the lecture entered the subject: A room divided by cubes. Piet Heins easily movable imagination grasped, in a lightening flash this unusual geometric theory. •

If you take all irregular shapes that can be formed by combining no more than four cubes, all the same size and joined at their faces. - These shapes can be combined to form a larger cube.

These are all the possible combinations of 1, 2, 3 and 4 cubes. •

You can visualize what is meant by "irregular" by noting that in such a figure, you can join two points on the figure with a line which lies outside the figure (except for the endpoints.) Thus, a figure formed by three cubes joined in a line is not irregular. .

As the lecture continued, Piet Hein convinced himself quickly, using some hasty sketches on a piece of paper, that seven shapes, which in total contained 27 cubes, would let itself be combined to a larger cube of the dimensions 3 x 3 x 3. When the lecture was over, he glued 27 dices together to form the 7 shapes, and was quick to get the idea tested in practice. It is important to note that Mr. Hein did NOT begin with a cube, and cut it up to form the puzzle. He visualized the pieces first, then considered whether they would form a cube. Piet Hein called his set of figures SOMA. He eventually arrived at the seven pieces making up the Soma Cube. It all went from there as he began working with the various shapes managing to create very impressive structures. It was soon thereafter noticed by Piet and his fellow Soma experimenters that the act of arranging the pieces into shapes became very fun, however, very addicting. After having worked with the figures for some days, many find that the shapes have been them so wellknown, that they can solve SOMA-problems in their head. Tests carried out by European psycologists, have shown that, the capability to solve SOMA-puzzles generally follow the curve of intelligence, but - with some strange

deviations at both ends of the intelligence curve. Some geniuses present pathetic results with the SOMA cubes, whereas some mentally retarded seem to have a special gift of spacial imagination, required by SOMA. All, who have participated in these tests, have insisted in continuing to play with the cubes, after finishing the tests.

The Soma cube consist of seven different polycubes, the threedimensional analogues of polyominoes. The polycubes can be fitted together to form the Soma cube in 240 ways. As well as a whole panoply of Soma shapes: the pyramid, the bathtub, the dog and so on.

One obvious activity is to try to find several possible solutions. It soon becomes clear that a method of recording solutions must be found. One method is to look at the completed figure from the top down, and record the number of the piece each component belongs to, using the piece numbers. Once you have discovered a figure of your own, record it using the method.

SOMA: (Sanskrit) Is an Euforic plant extraction, used in ancient India as a narcotic SOMA narcotics forgot time and place. MartinGardner says: The number of beautiful figures, that may be built using the 7 SOMA shapes seem to be unlimited, when I wrote my article in the magazine 'Scientific American', I only figured that a few readers would take the trouble of making their own set of SOMA shapes. But I was wrong. Thousands of readers mailed me drawings of new SOMA models, and many claimed that they no longer had any spare time, after they were caught by the SOMA. Scientific American brought columns on SOMA in Sep 1958, July 1969, sep 1972. In August 1998 they presented the figures Dog, Pyramid, Stairs, Chair, Steamer, Castle, Skyscraper(Impossible), Bathtub, Tunnel, Sofa, Well and the Wall. Teachers produced SOMA-sets for their classes. Psycologists started using SOMA at their tests. SOMA enthusiasts made SOMA sets to friends in hospitals, and for christmas gifts. The charme of SOMA is, for a large part, I would think, that one only uses 7 shapes. One is not overwhelmed by a complicated material. Piethein says: It is a beautiful humour of the nature, that the 7 simplest irregular combinations of cubes, can be recombined to the cube again. The multitudes of unity is again producing the unity. This is the worlds smallest philosophic system, and that surely must be an advantage.