math them

In this post, we'll look at some puzzles based on the presentations of finite groups that students will approach as a puzzle of turning one string into another according to some rule set.

Rubik's cubes have a strange place in our pop culture as artifacts that only geniuses can solve, but the many guides on solving them have made solution techniques pretty accessible to a wide audience. Mathematicians like them because they provide a shiny introduction to group theory that leave students with a neat party trick. Today we'll look at the "pocket cube" (the 2x2x2 version, typically abbreviated 2x2), which I've had good luck introducing to beginners.