Rubik's Cube Solution

 After learning to solve the Rubik's cube in Yr 12 Maths Methods, I've had quite a few people ask how it's done. So I've finally gotten around to writing a guide. Hopefully this will be easy to understand, but as they say "practice makes perfect..." What is in this guide may not make sense to start with, but as you get more experience with the cube and how it all fits together and moves, you should be able to finish the cube.

Given enough practice and a good memory, you should be able to do it quite quicky. I can do it usually between 2-3 minutes depending on complexity. Anyway first off I thought I would define a few things:

• Cubelet - one of the little cubes that make up the Rubik's cube.
• Side - one side of the cube, will be one colour when finished.
• Edge - the border between 2 colour sides.
• Corner - the border between 3 colour sides.

When following this guide, try to keep the same orientation of the cube, otherwise the guide will not work. Look at the cube, focus on one of the centre pieces and rotate some of the other sides. You will notice the center never changes. We will use this to base an orientation on. Ie. the blue face is the one with the blue centre.

The following is the key to the directions I give. Learn them and what they mean on the first 2 layers, because the final (and hardest) layer will only be these directions! Hold one face towards you, the direction shows which pieces to rotate, and the direction.

	Rotate top side right (anti-clockwise in repect to top side)		Rotate top side left (clockwise in repect to top side)
	Rotate bottom side right (clockwise in repect to bottom side)		Rotate bottom side left (anti-clockwise in repect to bottom side)
	Rotate left side up (anti-clockwise in repect to left side)		Rotate left side down (clockwise in repect to left side)
	Rotate middle up (Or rotate middle and one side up, then side piece down again)		Rotate middle down (Or rotate middle and one side down, then side piece up again)
	Rotate right side up (clockwise in repect to right side)		Rotate right side down (anti-clockwise in repect to right side)
	Rotate front side clockwise		Rotate front side anti-clockwise
	Rotate back side clockwise (anti-clockwise in respect to back side)		Rotate back side anti-clockwise (clockwise in respect to back side)

There is only one solution to any Rubik's cube. Each cubelet has one position, and one orientation. So if any of you have ever taken apart a cube, you may find that you have an edge or corner that is wrong.

There are many ways to solve a rubik's cube, this is just one of them. This isn't necessarily the best method either, but it is the method I learnt. Now this method utilises a 'layer' approach. This involves completely solving one colour, then the layer underneath, then finally the final layer.

On to the first Layer