Challenge

Build Cubes & Polycubes

Photo of a 3 by 3 grid of square set timbering in a mine with 2 miners in two of the cells looking at camera
Square set timbering was invented in 1860 by Phillip Deidesheimer in Nevada for extracting silver from the Comstock Lode in Virginia City. This image shows the scale of an implementation in the Smuggler mine, Aspen Mountains, Colorado. Image from Aspen Historical Society, Shaw Collection

Build shapes only with square faces.

  • What symmetries does a cube have?
  • What are tetracubes? How many are there? What is the Soma Cube and what are packing problems?
  • What are the Necker Cube, the Tesseract and The Kaaba?
  • What is square-set timbering? Where was it first used? What other shapes fill 3D space?
  • How and why did cubes influence the work of George Braque and Pablo Picasso?
  • What properties of the cube make it such a ubiquitous shape across the arts and sciences? What are the most iconic cubic objects?
  • How can you devise a game or puzzle using cubes as a fundamental feature?

For answers, notes, and supporting materials, enter your license code.

Enter Premium License

Pinned images from our dedicated Pinterest board.