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G4G's Virtual Celebration of Mind | October 2022
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Mining the Soma Cube for Gems: Isomorphic Subgraphs Reveal Equivalence Classes
Soma cubes are an example of a dissection puzzle, where an object is broken down into pieces, which must then be reassembled to form either the original shape or some new design. In this paper, we present some interesting discoveries regarding the Soma Cube. Equivalence classes form aesthetically pleasing shapes in the solution set of the puzzle. These gems are identified by subgraph isomorphisms using SNAP!/Edgy, a simple block-based computer programming language. Our preliminary findings offer several opportunities for researchers from middle school to undergraduate to utilize graphs, group theory, topology, and computer science to discover connections between computation and geometric patterns.
Edward Vogel is a child of the 60s and a US Navy veteran, where he lived out his snide remark “no, an engineer on a boat” to a doubtful high school math teacher. Largely self educated in electrical engineering and mathematics he lives in Minneapolis working in medical device R&D by day and STEM/Arts education nights and weekends.
