Towers Of Hahnoi Analysis

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Figure 1. An image depicting the ‘Towers of Hanoi’ puzzle. The ‘Towers of Hanoi’ is a puzzle published in 1883 by French mathematician Edouard Lucas, under his pen name N. Lucas de Siam. It consists of three poles and several disks, all of which start on the leftmost pole. The aim of the riddle is the move all the disks onto a different pole, whilst only moving one disk at a time and keeping in mind that a bigger disk cannot go on a smaller disk. Furthermore, the puzzle is accompanied by a legend. During the reign of the Emperor Fo Hi in Benares, there existed a temple with a dome marking the center of the world. In it was a contraption identical to the one seen above, albeit with golden disks, diamond needlepoints, and a cubit high and thick as the body of a bee. The belief was that God fitted 64 of these disks on one needle at the time of creation. The legend also stated that completing the aim of the riddle would lead to the …show more content…

This legend is similar to the Mayan apocalypse planned to occur on the 21st of December, 2012, at the end of the 13th b’ak’tun, which marked the end of a 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. It was highly publicized, most notably through the American film 2012, which came out in 2009. The Mayan apocalypse was much more reasonable than the legend of the ‘Towers of Hanoi,’ as the prediction was made much closer to the date and we were able to identify events that could lead to the ‘end of the world as we know it,’ whereas the latter legend is more than half a billion years from now and there is no way of predicting the threats that will exist at that time. Unlike the ‘Towers of Hanoi’ legend, the Mayan Apocalypse prediction could have been important to our lives, as the date was very

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