MATHS FOR GENIUS: TOWER OF HANOI Pedro Luis Fernández Martínez

Legend says that many years ago when God was creating the world, he put three rods with 64 discs of pure gold from largest to smallest size in a small church. The task was to pass the 64 discs from one bar to another, and when the puzzle was done the world would end. Studies done today would say that the minimum number of movements to complete the task is 18,000 million and if you worked at a rate of one movement per second it would take six thousand million centuries.

In this Tower of Hanoi you only have 5 discs so you have to pass the 5 discs of the first bar to the third one. But there are two rules: 1. You can’t move two discs at the same time. 2. You can’t put a big disc on a smaller one. That’s all but before you do the problem I’m going to give you a clue, the minimum number of movements that you have to do is an odd number that is between twenty and fifty.

THE END