Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T07:19:21.873Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The mathematics of a mechanical puzzle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2016

G. C. Shephard
G. C. Shephard*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 1A1, Canadaand , University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For some mechanical puzzles there exists a complete mathematical analysis. The purpose of this note is to describe one such puzzle, together with a number of variations of it. In the classroom the puzzle could be used as a teaching aid to introduce children to binary notation, mathematical induction, congruences, as well as some of the concepts of group theory. My own ten-year-old son was delighted to find that counting in binary notation, an idea to which he had been introduced in a purely theoretical way, leads to an easy method of solving the puzzle.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 61 , Issue 417 , October 1977 , pp. 174 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page no 176 note † See, for example, W. W. Rouse Ball, Mathematical recreations and essays, 11th edition revised by H. S. M. Coxeter (1939), pp. 307-310; H. E. Dudeney, Amusements in mathematics (1917), pp. 247-248; or M. Kraitchik, Mathematical recreations, pp. 89-91. See also Lucas, E., Récréations mathématiques (1891), Vol. 1, pp. 161–186 Google Scholar, where it is called “Le jeu du Baguenaudier”. This is a better name than “Chinese rings”, for the puzzle appears to be of an occidental rather than an oriental origin.