Eight Queens Puzzle - Yan Wang

PHYS 210 PROJECTS --> here

Idea No. 1: "Eight Queens puzzle"

I dropped the idea about Sudoku (see below), because there are tons of sources about it which leaves me no chance to work on it, unless I do something really cool. But it's impossible for me.

So I turned to this idea --- the Eight Queens puzzle. I'm not sure whether or not you've heard this before. After you've read about this, you would know that only [math]\displaystyle{ n=1 }[/math] queen and [math]\displaystyle{ n \ge 4 }[/math] queens problem have solutions. I am intending to create a program or project, what ever it is called, as a game or puzzle for users to play, with hints and solutions. The interface may be modified as beautifully as possible to prevent players from being bored with mathematical brainstorms (3D, if possible).

This program could contain mainly three parts: the interface (mainly colors, buttons, click input stuff), the puzzle calculation (logical puzzle calculation and response to interface), and the solutions display (with logical solutions calculation and display).

This would certainly make a nice puzzle, although the relevance to physics is not yet obvious. Why eight queens? Why not let the user select [math]\displaystyle{ n }[/math] and discover for him/herself which ones are soluble? -- Jess 12:41, 5 October 2008 (PDT)

Idea No. 2: "Einstein puzzle"

Another idea I'm think about is the "Einstein Puzzle". The most famous rumor about this puzzle is, "Einstein said only 2% of the world's people could solve this problem." I'm not sure whether you've heard this before. If not or not sure, please have a look (see the link above). Also, this could be put into a program or project, what ever it is called, which can offer an interface for players to play with and solve this problem rather than drawing by hand on paper. If there's some smart guys who consider themselves part of the 2% population, this program will be attractive to them.

This program could also contain three parts, the interface (with a diagram 1~5 in row and "house" "color" "nationality" "drink" "smoke" "pet" in columns, as well as color, button, click stuff), the puzzle calculation and response to part 1, and the answer display (since there's only one answer, there is no calculation involved, just an output of the answer).

Interesting, but except for the unconfirmed attribution to Albert it has nothing to do with physics. A more serious limitation is the fixedness of the puzzle: it has just one version and just one solution, so one can only play the game once. If you could figure out a way to generate arbitrary versions of the puzzle (ensuring, of course, that each one is definitely soluble) then it would be an awesome pastime for geniuses with nothing better to do.   :-) -- Jess 12:41, 5 October 2008 (PDT)

Previous idea: A Sudoku creator

This idea turned to be impossible for me to fulfill. Because people have done lots of work on it, most of which are much better than me and easily gotten by Google. I cannot work out something more attractive than those. So I dropped it.

An interesting game. More mathematical than physical, of course, but many seemingly "useless" mathematical puzzles have a way of finding unexpected applications in physics. (I suspect that a deep understanding of anything is bound to eventually find an "application".) The problem here is that there are clearly a huge variety of Sudoku game-generators "out there" already. I visited 3 or 4 sites that offered to generate a game for you over the Internet or let you download an application that would generate a game. So this is a solved problem, which simply means that an original contribution requires that you either find a new "twist" (like 3D Sudoku, if that is even possible -- an interesting question in itself!) or make an improved game-generator (and show clearly how it is an improvement) or just work on the display and user interface (which is really just "game development", not "computational physics"). The first step, I think, would be to get your hands on the sources for one of the existing game-generators (for starters, Google Sudoku source code) and learn the algorithm for generating a game. From this you should be able to acquire a deeper understanding of the principles involved, and possibly be able to determine formally whether a 3D version is even possible. If it is, that would be cool; the hard part would be to make a 3D display of the 3D game where all the numbers don't just get scrambled up on top of each other. Maybe a 3D version should just be 3x3x3? Etc. -- Jess 10:05, 4 October 2008 (PDT)