Abstract
What if we played the Rubik's cube game by simple intuition? We would rotate the cube, probably in the hope of getting a more organized pattern in each next step. Yet frustration occurs easily, and we soon find ourselves trapped as the game progresses no further. Played in this completely strategy-less style, the entire problem of the Rubik's cube game can be compared to that of complex chemical reactions such as protein folding, only with less guidance in the searching process. In this work we look into this random-searching process by means of thermodynamics and compare the game's dynamics with that of a faithful stochastic model constructed from the statistical energy landscape theory (SELT). This comparison reveals the peculiar nature of SELT, which relies on the random energy approximation and often chops up energy correlations among nearby configurations. Our observation provides a general insight for the use of SELT in the studies of these frustrated systems.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 012815 |
| Journal | Physical Review E - Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics |
| Volume | 89 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 Jan 29 |
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ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
- Statistics and Probability
- Condensed Matter Physics
Cite this
Rubik's cube : An energy perspective. / Chen, Yiing Rei; Lee, Chi Lun.
In: Physical Review E - Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, Vol. 89, No. 1, 012815, 29.01.2014.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Rubik's cube
T2 - An energy perspective
AU - Chen, Yiing Rei
AU - Lee, Chi Lun
PY - 2014/1/29
Y1 - 2014/1/29
N2 - What if we played the Rubik's cube game by simple intuition? We would rotate the cube, probably in the hope of getting a more organized pattern in each next step. Yet frustration occurs easily, and we soon find ourselves trapped as the game progresses no further. Played in this completely strategy-less style, the entire problem of the Rubik's cube game can be compared to that of complex chemical reactions such as protein folding, only with less guidance in the searching process. In this work we look into this random-searching process by means of thermodynamics and compare the game's dynamics with that of a faithful stochastic model constructed from the statistical energy landscape theory (SELT). This comparison reveals the peculiar nature of SELT, which relies on the random energy approximation and often chops up energy correlations among nearby configurations. Our observation provides a general insight for the use of SELT in the studies of these frustrated systems.
AB - What if we played the Rubik's cube game by simple intuition? We would rotate the cube, probably in the hope of getting a more organized pattern in each next step. Yet frustration occurs easily, and we soon find ourselves trapped as the game progresses no further. Played in this completely strategy-less style, the entire problem of the Rubik's cube game can be compared to that of complex chemical reactions such as protein folding, only with less guidance in the searching process. In this work we look into this random-searching process by means of thermodynamics and compare the game's dynamics with that of a faithful stochastic model constructed from the statistical energy landscape theory (SELT). This comparison reveals the peculiar nature of SELT, which relies on the random energy approximation and often chops up energy correlations among nearby configurations. Our observation provides a general insight for the use of SELT in the studies of these frustrated systems.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84894540594&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84894540594&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevE.89.012815
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevE.89.012815
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84894540594
VL - 89
JO - Physical Review E
JF - Physical Review E
SN - 2470-0045
IS - 1
M1 - 012815
ER -