The Soma Cube is a classic 3D puzzle comprising how many angular shapes, being all possible combinations of 3 or 4 wholly-joined cube-parts?
Soma cube Soma cube The Soma cube is a solid dissection puzzle invented by Piet Hein in 1933 during a lecture on quantum mechanics conducted by Werner Heisenberg. Its name is alleged to be derived from the fictitious drug "soma" consumed as a pastime by the establishment in Aldous Huxley's dystopic novel "Brave New World". Seven pieces made out of unit cubes must be assembled into a 3×3×3 cube. The pieces can also be used to make a variety of other 3D shapes. The pieces of the Soma cube consist of all possible combinations of three or four unit cubes, joined at
Soma cube performance and effort in a series of psychology experiments. In these experiments, test subjects are asked to solve a soma cube as many times as possible within a set period of time. For example, In 1969, Edward Deci, a Carnegie Mellon University graduate assistant at the time, asked his research subjects to solve a soma cube under conditions with varying incentives in his dissertation work on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation establishing the social psychological theory of crowding out. In each of the 240 solutions to the cube puzzle, there is only one place that the "T" piece can be placed.