Rubik's Cube Reflections

Dear Colleagues, Friends, & Supporters,

Our new blog by Prof. Christine von Renesse describes how solving the Rubik's cube can be a powerful activity for math for liberals arts students. The blog includes videos, student quotes and and student work. Do you know how to solve the cube?

Now that our semester is done we are getting ready to travel to Germany for the summer: We are facilitating a workshop at the International Congress on Mathematical Education in Hamburg and are giving a talk at the Imaginary Conference in Berlin.

We had a wonderful time facilitating the workshop at Lehman College in NYC. Our next upcoming workshop will be at the NYSMATYC conference in Corning, NY, in October 2016.

Are you interested in visiting Westfield and joining some IBL classes for a day or two? We have updated our schedule for Fall 2016 and would love to collaborate with you!

Sincerely,

Julian Fleron, Phil Hotchkiss, Volker Ecke, & Christine von Renesse.

Rubik's Cube Investigations

Solving the Rubik’s cube was one of the main themes in my Mathematical Explorations class this semester. My students believed for most of the semester that they would never ever be able to solve the cube. Watching them overcome this belief was powerful for all of us. One of the main goals of my course is for students to change their beliefs about their mathematical abilities and to become more persistent, confident and creative in problem solving. And the Rubik's cube does just that.
 

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