Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Hanoi Tower and its benefits

There’s a famous legend in Vietnam. In one of villages, there’s a temple where some monks stayed. The monks wanted to move 64 different size of chips from one tower to another tower. Because the chips were fragile, they must be extra careful to move them.

They were only able to move one by one and the bigger chip were not allowed to be put above smaller chip. Therefore, they needed another tower for temporary keeping. By that time the monk finished moving all the chips, that’s the end of the world.

If the legend is true and the monks could move the chips effectively, they need at least 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 movements. How long do you think they need to move those chips? They need at least 585,000,000,000 years.

On the other story, those chips were made from gold and if the monks were required to move them within one day, how long does it take?

Inspired by those story, Edouard Lucas, Mathematic expert from France introduced Hanoi Tower Games. Hanoi Tower is a logic games

Let see how it plays

On the first tower, they have three chips, white, black and red chip, The biggest chips is white and thesmalles chip is red on top. Now move those three chips from first tower to the last tower with this rules :
1. The chip on the bottom must be bigger than the one on top
2. The chip must be moved one by one
3. The second tower is only used temporary

This picture shows how the chips are moved. Total movement is 7.
The best way to try this Hanoi Tower games is having this Hanoi Tower and try those steps. You can purchase here at DIY Flashcard online store, Now it’s available.



Hanoi Tower is suitable for age 4 years and above, even for adults. Those who are able to solve the games, who knows in the future they will become mathematic expert.

The benefit of Hanoi tower for kids :
-          Stimulate concentration and hand – eye coordination
-          Understanding about big and small, long and short concept and color recognition
-          Kids will be entertained by this Hanoi tower and keep them busy solving the games.


Reference :

1. Wikipedia
2. Superkids, http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/logic/towers/math.shtml
3. Various information from internet