Check out Soma Cubes

I became familiar with the Soma Cube in 2002, when I was working for a summer program as a junior instructor. As is often the case, I benefited from being an instructor just as much if not more than the students whom I was teaching. It took me several years to “add together” the knowledge that I have gained both as a junior instructor and two years later as a Marketing and Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises major at Syracuse University.

My new knowledge of creative economy and the solutions of the Soma Cube have led me to come up with a creative plan that utilizes the scraps produced by Maine wood-workers to make and distribute Soma Cubes for Maine schools.

The Soma Cube is one of the simplest and most elegant of all the “put- together” puzzles. Invented in 1936 by Piet Hein, it was popularized by Martin Gardner through his Scientific American column on Mathematical Games and it was first produced and distributed by Parker Brothers.

The puzzle is made of seven pieces, representing all of the ways in which three or four cubes can be arranged, except in a straight line. The main task is to put the seven pieces together to make a three-by-three cube. The secondary and tertiary tasks are to use the same seven pieces to form a variety of artistic shapes, resembling buildings, animals furniture and other familiar objects. Two sets of Soma cubes together could be used for further artistic shapes.

Following Gardner’s column raised considerable interest in the Soma Cube. Readers eventually began making their own Soma Cubes by gluing small cubes together. Mathematician John Conway, and M.J.T. Guy prove that the Soma pieces will form a cube in 240 ways, not counting reflections or rotations.

The Soma Cube is categorized as an outstanding mechanical puzzle that develops geometric and spatial intuition. Players become intrigued by it and want to get to the bottom of it. In many ways this natural curiosity is the true spirit of learning, the search for truth and beauty, along with a sense of play.

I have been gluing the cubes together and painting and glazing Soma Cubes ever since I was a junior instructor and saw the commercially made Soma Cubes. This spring I founded the Maine Woodworkers for Informal Education Organization, a nonprofit organization, coordinating Maine woodworkers to donate their scraps to my organization. It is my goal that by 2008 I’d donate four sets of Soma Cubes to all Maine schools with instructions and a Web site addresses for further resources.

Teachers who have received Soma Cubes from me already, use them to benefit students to play with them in their spare time; for example if they are done sooner with their assignments than their classmates. Other teachers make the cubes available for “check-out” so students can take them home for a few days or for a weekend.

Interested teachers are invited to contact me and request Soma Cubes sets from us. We serve the schools on a first-asked first-served basis but sooner or later all schools in Maine will have it and the students will benefit from the creative qualities fostered by this excellent mechanical puzzle.

Scott Wheaton is a resident of Orono and will start his third year at Syracuse University in the fall of 2006. He can be reached by e-mail at smwheato@syr.edu.