Criterion

C
Goal: my goal was to create a method for solving the Rubik’s cube and showing 5
people how to solve it

Global context: Scientific and technical innovation

Inquiry question: Why is the Rubik's cube so hard to solve and how has it evolved to
become an IQ test?

The Rubik’s’ cube has become a staple of pop culture and has proven a challenge
for people over the world. It seems hard to solve because of its 43 quintillion
possible combinations but how hard is it to create a method and teach people?
My final product is a handbook and teaches how to solve the Rubik’s cube in the
way I created. It works as I have tried it with 5 different people. There is also an
accompanying video of the 5 subjects solving the Rubik’s cubes

Thinking skills:
First of all I had to identify problems: the first one was that I needed to create a new
original method. This was a problem because throughout my 7 years cubing I have
always relied on YouTube and pre-built methods to solve my Rubik’s cube. So I have
never really figured anything out on my own and thus creating a method would be
challenging and I had to think. After all my years of cubing there was a four move set
called the “sexy move” This four move set is R U R’ U’ and is used in the speed
cubing community to create a lot of algorithms. I watched the first video I watched 7
years ago and learnt the “beginner” method all over again. I broke down the cube into
7 steps and tried to integrate the “sexy move” in each step in order to simplify the
method. After a lot of experimenting I managed to use the “sexy move” in 5 of the
steps. I broke down large concepts into component parts and combined them
logically. I improved on the original method, as it is now much easier to execute the
algorithms.
Communication skills:
As part of my project I taught five people how to solve the Rubik’s cube in order to
see if my method would work and would improve it depending on peoples comments.
In order to gather people I went on Snapchat and asked people from Le Bocage if they
wanted to learn how to solve it. After that ten people answered me and I had to
communicate with them on when we should start. 5 of the people could meet my
schedule and thus we started. Every week during lunch I would meet the 5 people and
we would learn how to solve it together and I would get feedback. I had 1 person from
form 1, 3 from form 4, 1 from form 6.
Thus I used communication skills.