Soma cube their faces, such that at least one inside corner is formed. There is one combination of three cubes that satisfies this condition, and six combinations of four cubes that satisfy this condition, of which two are mirror images of each other (see Chirality). Thus, 3 + (6 × 4) is 27, which is exactly the number of cells in a 3×3×3 cube. The Soma cube was analyzed in detail by John Horton Conway on September 1958 in Mathematical Games column in "Scientific American", and the book "Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays" also contains a detailed analysis of the Soma
Cube root this required the construction, now known to be impossible, of the length . A method for extracting cube roots appears in "The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art", a Chinese mathematical text compiled around the 2nd century BCE and commented on by Liu Hui in the 3rd century CE. The Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria devised a method for calculating cube roots in the 1st century CE. His formula is again mentioned by Eutokios in a commentary on Archimedes. In 499 CE Aryabhata, a mathematician-astronomer from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy, gave a method for finding