How Many Different Incomplete Cubes Are There?

A counting puzzle about cube edges connects rotational symmetry, group theory and an artwork by Sol LeWitt.

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3Blue1Brown
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2025년 9월 7일
영상
1:12
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슬라이드
2
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요약

30초 요약

3Blue1Brown asks how many distinct frames can be made by removing edges from a cube when rotations count as the same configuration. The short connects the question to Sol LeWitt’s 1974 artwork and introduces a longer guest video by Paul Dancstep; it does not give the count.

  1. 1Remove edgesThe puzzle counts partial cube frames made by leaving out edges.
  2. 2Account for rotationsConfigurations related by a rotation are considered identical.
  3. 3Art and group theoryA related constrained problem inspired a 1974 Sol LeWitt artwork and leads toward Burnside’s lemma.

핵심 정리

  1. Removing edges from a cube produces many partial frames.
  2. Two frames count as the same when one can be rotated to match the other.
  3. The related artwork has additional constraints, and the longer video explores Burnside’s lemma.
전문

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원본 자막만 보기
01

The incomplete-cube puzzle

Remove cube edges and count distinct frames, identifying those that differ only by rotation.

An incomplete cube frame
슬라이드 1 / 2An incomplete cube frameRemoving edges leaves a partial frame to be counted.

How many ways can a cube be incomplete? Take a cube’s edge frame and remove some edges. The question is how many distinct partial frames can be made.

There is a catch: if you can rotate one incomplete cube to match another, they count as the same configuration. Simply counting every choice of edges would therefore count some arrangements more than once.

02

Art and a mathematical method

The presenter relates the question to Sol LeWitt’s work and a longer video exploring group theory.

A constrained collection of cube frames
슬라이드 2 / 2A constrained collection of cube framesThe artwork applies additional conditions, including connectedness and rotational uniqueness.

With additional constraints, a related question formed the premise of a 1974 artwork by Sol LeWitt. The short points to a longer guest video by Paul Dancstep, which tells the artwork’s story alongside a problem-solving process leading to group theory and Burnside’s lemma. This short invites viewers to think about the puzzle without giving the count.

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