Rubik’s Cube & the Sun

Andreas Wagner, Eleanna Asvestari, Emilia Kilpua

September 2023

Rubik’s Cube Tutorial

1 Prerequisites
To solve the traditional 3x3x3 Rubiks Cube, let’s first cover some basics. There are 3 different types of
pieces which can be found on the cube: A center piece, an edge piece and a corner piece. You can separate
them by counting how many different colors they have. A center piece has only one color and is immovable.
Therefore, these pieces will determine the color of the face once it is solved. The edge pieces have stickers
of two colors on them, and the corner pieces have three different color stickers on them. Here comes the
first important fact about these pieces: You can never change the location of a certain type of piece with a
different type of piece! For example, you cannot swap a corner piece, with an edge or center piece.

The last thing before we get started is the notation. I will be using pictures to help following along, but
typically in many online resources, people will only use the standard notation to tell you which turns you
should make to solve a certain case. There are 6 elementary turns (plus their inverse) that one can do, each
noted by a singular letter (and adding a ’ symbol for the inverse) as shown in Image 1 below.

Image 1: Notation

One way to remember the above is that the letters stand for the position of the face you are turning (R for
Right, L for Left, U for Up, D for Down, F for Front and B for Back) and the normal way of turning is
clockwise (while the inverse is counter-clockwise). Finally, if a layer is turned twice, a ”2” is added at the
end. For example, R2 means turning the right layer 2 times.

1
2 First Layer
2.1 Edges:
The first step to solving the first layer is correctly plac-
ing all the edges of this layer. This is often also re-
ferred to as ”The Cross”. In this tutorial we select the
white layer as starting point. First, hold the cube such
that the white center piece is on the top. The edges are
the pieces that have 2 colors. Therefore, we also have to
solve them not only with regards to the top center piece,
but also with regards to the center pieces on the adjacent
sides. Image 2 shows a correct and a wrong case with
all the other pieces we do not care about for now grayed Image 2: The Cross
out.

To solve the first step, we try to find an edge piece that contains white on the D-layer. If there is a white
edge-piece on the D-layer, we can then freely turn it with D, D’ or D2, until it is located under its correct
position (you should turn the whole cube along, to follow its movement). From then on, there are two cases,
that can be solved as shown in Image 3 below.

Image 3: The Cross: Cases 1 and 2

If there is no white edge-piece on the D-layer, it has to hide somewhere else. Wherever they are, they can
be brought down to the D-layer quite easily, as shown in Image 4. Once you have done that, you can solve
them as above. So, again move your piece below its correct position with D, D’ or D2 and follow it. Then
solve this white edge-piece either as Case 1 or Case 2 shown in Image 3 above. If you practice for a while,
you might notice that there are many special cases, for which more efficient solutions exist. Be bold and try
to figure some out for yourself!

2
 Image 4: The Cross: Cases 3 to 7

2.2 Corners:
In the next step, we are solving the corners of the first
layer. Note that now we have to take care that all three
colors match with the colors of the adjacent center pieces
as shown at the illustration given in Image 5 to the
right.

Similar to before, we firstly check, if we can find any of the

white corner pieces in the bottom layer. If that is the case, Image 5: First Layer
then you can place them with D, D’ or D2 movements under
its correct location and follow it along. Once we complete this, we hold the cube such that the piece we
want to solve is in the bottom right corner, and the position it belongs to is on the top right. Sometimes, a
corner piece might be stuck in the correct location, but wrong orientation (cases 4 and 5 shown in Image
4). For those, the same logic applies, but holding now the corner in the top right instead of bottom right.
Then, we perform the algorithm shown in Image 6 repeatedly, until the piece is solved.

In very unlucky scenarios, you might find that all piece you want to solve are stuck in another piece’s position
in the first layer. In this case, you can perform the algorithm above once, holding the piece in the top right
like in cases 4 and 5. After that, you will find this piece in the D-layer, where you can then proceed as
before. It is of course the easiest to use only this one algorithm to solve this step, but again, you may find
many more efficient ways to solving individual cases.

3
 Image 6: Corners of the First Layer

3 Second Layer
Next, we continue with solving the second layer. Because we have been careful with solving the cross-edges
to the correct center-piece colors at its adjacent sides, we only have to solve four pieces to complete the
second layer!

First, we flip the cube such that the finished layer is at the
bottom (here white is on the bottom side and yellow at the
top). Then we have to identify the missing pieces of the sec-
ond layer. These are also edge-pieces, like the cross-edges, but
they contain all kinds of colors - except for the top and bottom
layer! We want to find such a piece on the top layer (U-layer).
If you can find one of these pieces, turn it with either U, U’
or U2 (and follow it again, by rotating the cube along with
it) such that its color on the front-side is the same as one of
the center pieces. In Image 7, to the right, you can see an Image 7: Correctly placing the 2nd layer
illustration of this. This works, because we can indeed freely pieces
turn the U-layer, since our solved side is now on the D-layer
and neither of the U-moves (U, U’ or U2) changes the D-layer.

After this is done, we have to perform the next algorithm to solve this piece to its correct location. There
are 2 cases: Either the second layer pieces have to go to the right or to the left. Depending on this, you
perform either of the 2 algorithms shown in Image 8.

As with the first layer corners, there might be the case that all pieces you want to solve are stuck in the
wrong position in the second layer. You can then perform one of the algorithms above to solve a random
piece from the upper layer to the current location of one of the second layer pieces. Doing this returns the
second layer piece to the top, where you can then again place it with U, U’ or U2 to the correct center-piece
and perform again Case 1 or 2 from above.

With this, you should be able to solve two full layers of cube, leaving only one remaining!

4
 Image 8: Second Layer Algorithm

4 Last Layer
Solving the last layer of the Rubiks Cube is typically split into multiple steps. A rule of thumb is, the less
steps you need for the last layer, the more algorithms one would have to learn. Here, we try to reduce the
amount of algorithms we have to learn drastically, but we will need 4 substeps to complete the last layer
(and with this the whole cube). The steps we will do are the following: 1) Solve the last layer edge-pieces
(last layer cross), 2) Permute the last layer cross-pieces, 3) Permute the last layer corner-pieces and 4) Orient
(and with this solve) the last layer corners.

4.1 Last Layer Cross - Part 1

To solve the cross of the last layer, we again hold the cube as before (solved first layer on the bottom). By
only looking at the orientation of the last layer cross edge-pieces (so edge pieces that contain the color of
the top center-piece), there are 4 possible cases: 1) the cross is already ”solved”, 2) there are two last-layer
cross pieces on the top, and they are adjacent, 3) there are two last-layer cross pieces on the top, and they
are located opposite to each other and 4) no cross pieces oriented correctly. To solve all of these cases, we
only need one algorithm, but we might need to use it multiple times. In fact, case 4 will produce case 3,
case 3 will produce case 2, and performing the algorithm for case 2 will solve the cross. In between each
algorithm, we need to make sure to hold the cube correctly, so we perform the algorithm from the correct
angle. To do this, you can again just turn the whole cube. The cases are illustrated in Image 9 below,
together with the correct orientation (how to hold the cube) and the corresponding algorithm.

5
 Image 9: Last Layer Cross Orientation

4.2 Last Layer Cross - Part 2

Now, we may have solved the cross at the top, but as with the cross at the first layer, we’d like to get the
secondary colors of the cross-edges to match the center-piece colors on the sides too.

As in the previous step, we follow a scheme, where we only need to use one algorithm, but we may need to
use it multiple times. We only can have 3 cases though: 1) The cross-edges are actually all at the correct
position, 2) we need to exchange adjacent cross-edges or 3) we need to exchange the cross-edges that are
opposite to each other. One important thing to note is that you are always allowed to use U, U’ and U2
moves to align the top layer. If you do not see at least 2 cross-edges that match the center-pieces on the
sides with their secondary color, then you need to apply U, U’ or U2 to achieve this! Once this is done, we
can apply the algorithm shown in Image 10 below, with the cube held like in the image, which is especially
important for case 2, where the wrong edges are placed in the front and in the left layer.
Case 3 actually works for both a wrong piece in front, as well as a correct one.

Image 10: Last Layer Cross Permutation

4.3 Last Layer Corners - Part 1

With the cross in the top layer now done, there are only 4 more pieces that need to be solved! We will again
do this in 2 steps, so that we need to learn only 1 more algorithm (and re-use one from before).

In the first step, we only want to bring the corners, to their correct position. We notice that a corner is in
the correct spot if it has the same 3 colors, as the 3 neighbouring center-pieces. For now, we do not care
about if the piece is rotated correctly or not. An illustration can be seen in Image 11, considering the

6
corner that is circled in purple.

Next, we count the number of these correctly placed

corner pieces. Note that this time, we cannot ro-
tate the top layer with U, U’ and U2 moves, be-
cause this would mess up the cross we just made!
There are 3 cases: 1) Either we have again all
corners correctly placed, 2) one corner is correctly
placed or 3) no corner is at its correct posi-
tion.

If we have case 3, that is no correct corner, then we may Image 11: How a ”correctly placed” last layer
hold the cube as you like, except that the solved first layer corner looks like.
needs to stay on the bottom. Otherwise, if we find one
correctly placed corner, we hold the cube such as in Image 11, meaning that the correctly placed corner is
in the top right position. This will preserve the corner, while we change the location of the other 3 with the
algorithm shown in Image 12.

Image 12: Last Layer Corner Permutation

As in the previous steps, we might not end up with 4 correct corners after doing the algorithm once. If
at first there was no good corner and then the algorithm is performed, there should be one correct corner
afterwards. Then, the cube has to be rotated as a whole to have this correct corner in the top right location,
and then we may need to do the algorithm once or twice more. If all the last layer corners are in their
correct spot, the last thing to do is to rotate them and we are done!

4.4 Last Layer Corners - Part 2

To finally solve the cube, we need to rotate the last layer corners - without destroying anything we did
before. To do this, we actually need to use the algorithm from solving the corners of the first layer. First,
we pick one of the corners that are not fully solved yet and place it again into the top right position by
rotating the whole cube (you can have either 2, 3 or all 4 corners that need to be rotated). Once this is
done, we repeat our corner-algorithm from the first layer, until this one piece is solved. You will notice that
once this piece is rotated correctly, the bottom part of the cube seems messed up - if you do everything
correctly, there is no need to worry about this! We just proceed by solving the other corners now. BUT:
we do not rotate the whole cube to bring the next corner to the top right position, instead we rotate only
the top layer (by doing a U, U’ or U2 move), such that the next corner piece is at the top right. This is very
important, because this will fix the mess in the end. Repeat this for every wrongly rotated corner, and in
the end, there should only be a U, U’ or U2 move left to solve the whole cube. An illustration of this last
step is given below, in Image 13 where we go through an actual 2 corner case, and how the cube looks at
each sub-step.

7
 Image 13: Solving the last layer corners.

5 Final Words
In this (hopefully useful) tutorial, we learned a rather simple approach to solving the Rubik’s Cube. Maybe
some have already heard or seen that there is a group of dedicated people practicing something called
”Speedcubing”, which means solving the Rubik’s Cube and related puzzles as quickly as possible. I may
note that the method presented here is a good starting point, and with a bit of practice, one can easily solve
the cube in under a minute with this method (with a lot of dedication also below half a minute!), but there
are more suited methods for solving it fast. These methods however are more complex and typically involve
learning more algorithms (some of them also reaching above 15 turns that one has to memorize). Probably
the most popular ones are called Roux and CFOP. For both, there are tons of resources online, so if you are
interested, you will for sure find good tutorials and videos on various platforms.

If you are interested in solving more puzzles, there are plenty more you can easily find. There is a smaller
version to the 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube, which is the 2x2x2 Cube - if you followed this tutorial, you should
even be able to piece the solution together yourself! There are also bigger cubes (my personal favorites),
going from 4x4x4 to massive sizes like 21x21x21 (even though the very big ones are super expensive, and
competitions are only held up to a size of 7x7x7, which is already quite big!). It also does not stop at cubic
puzzles, there are other fun non-cubic puzzles like for example Pyraminx, Megaminx, Skewb, and many
more. As impressive as the Megaminx looks like, if you cleverly piece together everything you have learned
in this tutorial, you might be able to solve it already!

Finally, I hope this tutorial was useful and maybe I inspired one of you to pick up the cube and find a fun
new hobby.

8
 The Sun in different colors

1 Just some facts about the Sun

The Sun, at the heart of our solar system, is a big ball of hot gas. At the core of the Sun, the temperature
is a dazzling 15 million (15 000 000) degrees Celsius. That is over ten thousands times hotter than the lava
erupting from the volcano. As we move from the core outward towards the Sun’s surface the temperature
drops to about 5600 degrees. However, an interesting thing happens above the Sun’s surface. The tempera-
ture suddenly dashes up again and reaches 1 million (1 000 000) degrees Celsius in the region called the solar
corona (”the crown of the Sun”). This phenomenon, called coronal heating, is a great mystery. Because the
Sun is so hot, the gas in it has converted to the fourth state of matter called plasma. Fun fact; you can find
plasma at Earth too, in neon signs or in the sky during a lightning or aurora. In plasma atoms break apart
forming a ”soup” of electrons and nuclei (Image 14).

Image 14: The different states we can find matter in nature and how applying heat takes us from solid state
to liquid, to gas, and at last to plasma state. Image credit: Eleanna Asvestari

The Sun produces its own magnetic field in its interior in a process involving complex movements of the
plasma. You probably have heard that the Sun is like a giant magnet! It has a north pole and a south pole
(these poles switch their place every 11-years!). The magnetic field stretches into the solar corona forming
big magnetic loops. Some of these loops are carried away from the Sun by a constant flow of plasma called
the solar wind. The plasma and magnetic field from the Sun hit our planet. They can cause big disturbances
in the Earth’s magnetic field and the beautiful aurora we so often enjoy on the Finnish night sky.

The Sun can therefore affect our technology in space and on the ground. As you can imagine, it is important
to understand them. And, to do that we need to understand their source, the Sun. In Solar Physics we do
that with physics based theory, big computational models, and of course observations!

9
2 The Sun of the many temperatures
As we learned so far, the plasma on the sur-
face of the Sun and throughout its corona exists
in a wide range of temperatures. The plasma
in different temperatures radiates light having dif-
ferent wavelengths. In fact, the Sun radiates
light from very short wavelengths such as X-
rays to long radio wavelengths. We thus take
photos of the Sun with cameras that have dif-
ferent filters to only allow light of a specific
wavelength to be captured. This provides us
with information of different layers and struc-
Image 15: The visible light travelling through a prism tures of the Sun’s atmosphere, and solar erup-
Image credit: Suidroot on Wikimedia Commons. tions.

Before we take a look at how the Sun looks at different wavelengths, let us remember the classical exper-
iment with light travelling through a prism. When this happens on the other side of the prism we see an
array of colours Each of these colors has a different wavelength. All these colors combined form what we call
the white light. From space the Sun looks white as it radiates strongly all the wavelengths of the visible light

Image 16: The solar corona observed in Image 17: The Sun observed at 4500 Å wavelength
white(visible)-light with the LASCO C2 tele- with the AIA space telescope onboard the Solar Dy-
scope onboard the SOHO spacecraft and visualised namics Observatory and visualised using the JHe-
using the JHelioviewer tool. lioviewer tool.

From Earth we however see the Sun shine as yellow. This is because the sunlight has passed through the
atmosphere where certain wavelengths of light scatter away. We can also see the solar corona in white-light.
If you ever witness a total solar eclipse, you will be able to see the corona! In solar physics we mimic the
solar eclipse with an instrument called the coronagraph. This instrument has a disc in the middle of the
telescope lens, that blocks the bright solar disk, allowing us to see the solar corona like in Image 16. All
these fine lines are giving us an idea of how the magnetic field in the solar corona looks like.

If we want to see the solar surface, also known as the photosphere, we need to observe the Sun with a camera
using a filter that can see plasma at temperatures of approximately 5600 degrees Celsius. The plasma at this
temperature emits in white-light at a wavelength around 4500 Å (1 Ångstrom is only 1−10 meters.Image
17 shows a photo of the Sun taken exactly with that filter. Do you see those dark spots on it? These are

10
known as sunspots and they can tell us a lot about how active the Sun is!

What does the Sun look like if we use cameras with filters that are sensitive to wavelengths beyond the
visible light? Well, let’s have a look!

Now, if we want to observe the plasma struc-

tures that are a bit hotter, for example at
around 50.000 degrees Celsius, we will need
a filter that observes light with a wavelength
of 304 Å. These plasma structures are above
the solar surface, in a region called the up-
per photosphere. Let’s have a look at it
in Image 18. This wavelength belongs to
the portion of the spectrum called Extreme Ul-
tra Violet (EUV). As you can see at this
wavelength the Sun appears like a sea of
lava. The very bright, almost white struc-
tures are called Active Regions, and as you
guessed from their name they are very ac-
tive. They often erupt giving birth to so-
lar storms. If you look at the image care- Image 18: The Sun observed at 304 Å wavelength with
fully, you will see some darker wavy structures the AIA space telescope onboard the Solar Dynam-
known as filaments. They can live for many-many ics Observatory and visualised using the JHelioviewer
days, but often they also erupt generating solar tool.
storms.

The Sun is observed with several other EUV fil-

ters that reveal hotter and hotter plasma. At al-
most million (1 000 000) degrees Celsius we ob-
serve light of 193 Å. This light was emitted by
plasma in the low corona, about a few thou-
sands kilometers above the photosphere. Im-
age 19 is a photo of the Sun at that wave-
length. Active regions have now become even
brighter and bigger. Take a look at how tall
structures they are! The Sun looks a bit hairy
at this wavelength! All these fine lines surround-
ing the Sun are related to the Sun’s magnetic
field.

Let’s take a look at how the Sun looks at 335 Å

where the plasma is almost 2.5 million (2 500 000) Image 19: The Sun observed at 193 Å wavelength with
degrees Celsius. In Image 20 there are less details the AIA space telescope onboard the Solar Dynam-
visible on the solar disk. This is because only a few ics Observatory and visualised using the JHelioviewer
structures in the low solar corona are that hot. Ac- tool.
tive regions are these bright structures. And at 94 Å
where the light is emitted by plasma as hot as 6 million (6 000 000) degrees Celsius only the hotter parts of
Active Regions are still visible as you can see from Image Image 21. If one of them erupts then this can
observe at this wavelength.

These are only some examples of the wavelength we observe the Sun at. And as you can see each reveals
something more, or something different comparing to others!

11
Image 20: The Sun observed at 335 Å wavelength Image 21: The Sun observed at 94 Å wavelength with
with the AIA space telescope onboard the Solar Dy- the AIA space telescope onboard the Solar Dynam-
namics Observatory and visualised using the JHe- ics Observatory and visualised using the JHelioviewer
lioviewer tool. tool.

3 Seeing the magnetic field

At the start of this chapter we discussed that the
Sun is a giant magnet. All the structures we
saw in the previous images of the Sun at differ-
ent wavelengths are associated with the Sun’s mag-
netic field. It is therefore important to be able
to capture it. That is made possible with an in-
strument called magnetograph, and which measures
the strength of the Sun’s magnetic field. With
this information we can create images of the solar
disk, called magnetograms, and which are show-
ing us spatial variations of the strength of the
Sun’s magnetic field on the disk. A magnetogram
is shown in Image 22. In white colour you
can see areas where the magnetic field is posi-
tive, thus pointing away from the Sun, and with
black you see areas where the magnetic field is Image 22: A magnetogram showing the spatial varia-
negative, thus pointing towards the Sun. Notice tions of the Sun’s magnetic field strength measured
how there are patches of paired black and white with by the HMI magnetograph onboard the Solar
structures. These are associated to the active re- Dynamics Observatory and visualised using the JHe-
gions we observed in EUV in the previous im- lioviewer tool.
ages.

All this information might be too much to digest in one read, but if you ever have any questions about these
or the Sun-Earth space and relations feel free to contact the researchers of the Space Weather Research
Group at the University of Helsinki.

12