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Feb 26, 2023

A New Puzzle Turns Earth Into a Rubik’s Cube, but More Complex

Posted by in category: mathematics

Another orbit around the sun and here we are again: back where we started but spun about — changed, perhaps deranged.

Henry Segerman, a British American mathematician and mathematical artist at Oklahoma State University, has invented just the puzzle for this disorienting annual event: Continental Drift, a 3D sliding puzzle that made its debut earlier this year. The underlying geometric concept is holonomy: When you travel a loop on a curved surface and return to the starting point, you arrive somewhat turned around, rotated, perhaps by 180 degrees.

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