Doubling the cube given length times . In music theory, a natural analogue of doubling is the octave (a musical interval caused by doubling the frequency of a tone), and a natural analogue of a cube is three repetitions of the same interval. In this sense, the problem of doubling the cube is solved by the major third in equal temperament. This is a musical interval that is exactly one third of an octave. It multiplies the frequency of a tone by , the side length of the Delian cube. Doubling the cube Doubling the cube, also known as the Delian problem, is
Doubling the cube at solving what they saw as an obstinate but soluble problem. However, the nonexistence of a solution was finally proven by Pierre Wantzel in 1837. In algebraic terms, doubling a unit cube requires the construction of a line segment of length , where ; in other words, . This is because a cube of side length 1 has a volume of , and a cube of twice that volume (a volume of 2) has a side length of the cube root of 2. The impossibility of doubling the cube is therefore equivalent to the statement that is not a constructible