Awesome Math Girls

Mihika Bansal

The Tower of Hanoi, also known as the Lucas Tower, was invented by the French mathematician, Èdouard Lucas, in 1883. Throughout his lifetime from birth on April 4, 1842 to death on October 3, 1891, Lucas was best known for his studies in number theory, particularly his work in the Fibonacci Sequence and his invention of the Tower of Hanoi.

The Tower of Hanoi is made up of:

Three long pegs

Eight to ten circular disks with different radii

The Two Rules:

Rule 1:  You can only put a smaller disk on top of a bigger one (not the other way around.)

Rule 2: You can only move the top disk in the stack from one peg to another peg.

The Goal:

The goal of the game is to get all of the disks from the first peg to the third peg in the least number of moves.

Start with 3 disks on peg 1 as a Tower of Hanoi, i.e., with the disks arranged in the order of smallest to largest radii (smallest being on the top of the pile).

Follow the two rules listed above and try to solve the puzzle, counting your moves.

After you have solved it once or twice, ask yourself, “can you do it again with fewer moves?”

Increase the difficulty by adding more disks when you think you have solved the puzzle with the fewest moves possible per n disks!

NOTE: PART 2 OF TOWER OF HANOI COMING SOON (with mathematical concepts involved)!! Try out the game online and see if you can spot any patterns/formulas!

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