Learning Advantage 7884 Tower of Hanoi
Tower of Hanoi, also known as The Pagoda Puzzle, is an ancient puzzle that uses repetitive sequential moves for its solution. Seems simple, huh? Here's the kicker...you are allowed to move one piece at a time and are only allowed to place a smaller piece on top of a larger piece. Tower of Hanoi was inspired by a legend that tells of a Hindu temple where the pyramid puzzle might have been used for the mental discipline of young priests. Legend says that at the beginning of time the priests in the temple were given a stack of 64 gold disks, each one a little smaller than the one beneath it. Their assignment was to transfer the 64 disks from one of the three poles to another, with one important provision. A large disk could never be placed on top of a smaller one. Where's the MATH in this game? The number of separate transfers of single disks the priests must make to transfer the tower is 2 to the 64th minus 1, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 moves! If the priests worked day and night, making one move every second it would take slightly more than 580 billion years to accomplish the job! You have a great deal fewer disks than 64 here.