Towers of Hanoi - Wooden Puzzle

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The tower of Hanoi (also called the tower of Brahma or the Lucas tower) was invented by a French mathematician Édouard Lucas in the 19th century. It is associated with a legend of a Hindu temple where the puzzle was supposedly used to increase the mental discipline of young priests. In the legend the young priests were given 64 gold disks stacked neatly on one of three posts. Each disk rested on a slightly larger disk. The priests' goal was to re-create the stack on a different post by moving disks, one at a time, to another post with the rule that a larger disk could never be placed on top of a smaller disk. Using mathematics, you can calculate that even when the priests found the most efficient way to solve the problem, and moved the disks at a rate of one per second, it would take almost 585 billion years to finish the job. That is more than 40 times the age of the universe!



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