Soma cube

Common card · No. 393010

The Soma cube is a solid dissection puzzle invented by Danish polymath Piet Hein in 1933 during a lecture on quantum mechanics conducted by Werner Heisenberg. Seven different pieces made out of unit cubes must be assembled into a 3×3×3 cube. The pieces can also be used to make a variety of other 3D shapes. The pieces of the Soma cube consist of all possible combinations of at most four unit cubes, joined at their faces, such that at least one inside corner is formed. There are no combinations of one or two cubes that satisfy this condition, but one combination of three cubes and six combinations of four cubes that do. Thus, 3 + (6 × 4) is 27, which is exactly the number of cells in a 3×3×3 cube. Of these seven combinations, two are mirror images of each other (see Chirality). The Soma cube was popularized by Martin Gardner in the September 1958 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. The book Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays also contains a detailed analysis of the Soma...

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