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Tower of Hanoi

Page history last edited by YSK 14 years, 6 months ago

Tower of Hanoi

 

Tower of Hanoi is a fun and creative mathematical puzzle, which consists of 3 pegs and a number of disks (See example below). 

 

          

          Figure 1. Tower of Hanoi. This figure illustrates

          example of Tower of Hanoi with 8 disks.

 

Who invented?

 

One of the French mathematician, Edouard Lucas, invented this puzzle in 1883.

 

What is the goal of the game?

 

The goal of this puzzle is to move all the disks from the left peg to the right peg. As you can see from the above picture, the disks on the left peg are all different sizes and arranged with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on the top. You should have exact arrange when you finish moving disks on the right peg. Try to move all the disks using as small number of movement as possible.

 

What kinds of rule?

 

  1. You need to move one disk at a time.
  2. Larger disk cannot be on top of the smaller disk.

 

How do I play?

 

Click and drag to move a disk. You can choose a number of disks that you want to play by pressing + or - on the right side of the winidow. Higher number of disks may indicate more difficult level to solve the puzzle. Try to solve the puzzle using smaller number at first if it is difficult. If you need help, you can press Solution button to watch how the computer solve the puzzle. If you want to restart the puzzle, you can press Restart button to play it again.

 

          Figure 2. Tower of Hanoi game. This figure illustrates

          image of Tower of Hanoi Retrieved from 

          http://www.mazeworks.com/hanoi/index.htm

 

Game?

 

You can play from this website: http://www.mazeworks.com/hanoi/index.htm 

 

What to look for in this game other than playing?

 

  1. What are the minimum number of moves for each of different number of disks?
  2. What kind of pattern can we find with the number of disks and the minimum number of moves? For example, what are the minimum number of moves for 1, 2, 3, and 4 disks? If it is different than your friends, then check with the computer by clicking Solution button.
  3. How many minimum number of moves will be required if there are 10, 50, or 100 disks on the left peg?
  4. Based on your observation of pattern, will this pattern continue even if there are infinite number of disks on the left peg?

 

 

Example of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle?

 

You can see this example how another player solved the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. 

 

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References:

 

Herzog, D. Tower of Hannoi. Retrieved from http://www.mazeworks.com/hanoi/index.htm.

 

Mathsnet. (2007, April 21). Tower of Hannoi. Message posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGlt2G-DC8c.

 

Tower of Hannoi. (n.d.). Retrieved from the Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hanoi

 

Tower of Hannoi. (n.d.). Retrieved from the NCTM resource: http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?id=40.

 

 

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