Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The Inspirational Rubik's Cube


The Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. The puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toys in 1980. Nowadays there are lots of variations of the puzzle by size but also by shape, like this Pyraminx Crystal


I did not concentrate on the puzzle aspect but all the imagination people have been using creating everyday things using the magical cube. There are also some new variations of the puzzle at the end.


Ear rings
[via eCRATER]


Necklace

[via CharcoalDesigns]


Handbag

[via YesStyle]


Cufflinks
[via The Retroist]


Salt and pepper mills
[via giftmonger]


Table

[via Popgadget]


Chairs


[via ON24 (Finnish)]


Art called Rubikubism


[via space-invaders.com]


Car commercial

Watch the awesome video!
[via Maniac World]


Cakes

[via Geekologie]

[via Eden Cakes]


Alarm clock

[via Bedzine]


mp3 - player
[via Yankodesign]


Subwoofer

[via Project 'Cube 2007]


Speaker

[via Megahouse]


Lamp

[via übergizmo]


Photo Cube

[via Ann's Personalized Gifts]


Pillow

[via Lankalauantai]


People who want more expensive looking cubes can choose form the one covered in swarovski stones

[via Etsy]

or try to get this full-size, fully working cube with 185 carats of precious gems, 1.5 pounds of pure sliver with eight coats of hand-painted enamel. Only 2,500 of limited edition Rubik's cube were produced worldwide distribution. The price of this toy is $10,000.00.

[via Gems Collection]


The colours are not necessary and the puzzle can be solved by touching the different sides. The next two examples show two different solutions.

Rubik Cube for Blind by Zhiliang Chen

There are six different basic materials involved. They are Metal, wood, textile, rubber, plastic and stone. Different materials give people different senses, which thus enabled the blind men to play.
[via Yankodesign]


[via Gearfuse]


Some additional twists are included in the next two cubes.

Sudoku and Rubik's Cube combined

[via Hilavitkutin via The Gadget Chest]


Mirror Cube


If you want to see this cube solved watch the video
[via Digital Gadgets Freak]


The next two are also games but not based on the Rubik cube's pieces and movement.

Rubik's Revolution

This cube has 6 different games. One of them is light rally where you have to push the hole in the cube on the side which has a matching colour. The cube mentions the colours in some order and this particular cube speaks Finnish


[via mulletoi where you can also see a guy playing light rally]
link to the English product's page


Magnetic Cube

[via Andrew Curtis]


One example of a futuristic puzzle

FENTIX CUBE
The world's first cubic touchscreen games platform. Featuring unique cubic ultra-bright full-colour multi-touch touchscreen technologies, the Fentix Cube has been programmed to implement various multi-dimensional games, puzzles, and lighting effects.

[andrewfentem]


And for the end two funny cubes

For the lazy person

[via Geekologie]


For Engineers or Blondes or...


Depending on the source this has different target groups. The engineer joke was from a Finnish engineer-student-website which I am not linking here because of the very questionable content. Other suggestions were of course blondes, beginners, non-geeks etc. I am not sure who to credit for this picture. It seemed that various sources had watermarked it for themselves.

2 comments:

Ryan Riegner said...

Wow, inspiring! All hail the rubik's cube!

Lori MathHead said...

I love this post. My brother is very good at these but the 2x2x2 puzzle is more my speed!