Chen Jie
D.O.B:020495
Victorian
Like sports and speedcubing
The Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Ernő Rubik. It is said to be the world's best-selling toy, with over 300,000,000 (300million)Rubik's Cubes being sold worldwide by 2005!
In a classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces is covered by 9 stickers, among six solid colours (traditionally white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow). A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be a solid colour. Apart from the regular 3x3x3 cubes, higher order cubes have patented and created such as the 2x2x2 ,through 5x5x5( As shown in the picture above). There are exactly 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possibilities, which is approximately 43 quintillion to solve a Rubik's Cube, and that's a lot!!!
So yeah, enough of the intro. So when was my first encounter with Rubik's Cube ? One day, I can't remember the date, when I just came to school I saw my fellow classmate, Kiran playing with an intriguing looking cube. I observed how swiftly Kiran rotated to cube and got enthralled by it.
I embarked on the ‘ambitious’ journey to of solving the cube that had frustrated thousands of people worldwide. With the help of Kiran and other friends, I finally mastered the concept of the complicated puzzle. It was such an ecstatic feeling when I first got all the six sides correct.
Steadily, my timing improved drastically. When I first started, my timing was 5 minutes. However, after two months of regular practice, it had dropped down to an astonishing 30secs and it became part of my daily routine.
Unlike other hobbies, this particular hobby is very appealing. In my opinion, speedcubing stimulate the brain and develop logical and systematic approaches to problem-solving, keep the mind sharp beneficial to the maintenance of short-term memory, eye-hand co-ordination and general concentration. Most importantly, it is engaging and full of astounding fun.
Now on the negative side, I got to admit that too addicted to speedcubing is detrimental. I vividly recalled that I got so preoccupied that I could not even ‘break’ when term 2 started in March last year and neglected my studies. Therefore, my results dropped drastically. My results were awfully atrocious :(
To cope with this problem, I had to take severe action. I had to prioritize myself, studies must always come first and to infuse restraint in myself. This proposal proved to be a fruitful. I passed with flying colours for my end of year examination...Let’s celebrate...=)
So wrapping up my second post, Dmoral of the story: studies always come first. Though I won’t really discourage people to refrain from playing Rubik's Cube as it is an exceptional way to distress.
One last video:
Just for fun ...>.<...LOL
Labels: 2nd entry, Rubik's Cube
