In the time it takes you to read this sentence, sophomore math prodigy Shari’11 might finish a 3x3 Rubik’s Cube.
Shari’s hands permute the colored cubes hundreds of times in the few seconds it takes her to solve a 3x3. She stares down at it with relaxed concentration, and her hands move surely over the cube, clicking the squares into place. Red, yellow, green, yellow, red…to a layman, the moves look impossibly complicated. But to Shari, a 3x3 is simple.
Shari, who transferred to Malborough in ninth grade from Manhattan Beach Middle School, can finish a 3x3 Rubik’s cube in 28 seconds and a 5x5 (which has been called the “professor cube”) in about 20 minutes. She has also solved the most advanced cube that has been invented so far, the V-Cube 7. She’s only done it once, and it took her about a day to figure it out.
For the last three years, Shari has attended a highly selective MathCamp at Reed College, where a friend first taught her to solve the “professor cube.”
When Math Camp ended, however, she did not feel she was fast or swift enough, and practiced 45 minutes to an hour a day until that winter to perfect the algorithms needed to solve this difficult cube.
“The first step I mess up on a lot,” Shari said. But that doesn’t stop her because, as she explains, “I like to think.”
That’s clear to those around her.
“She loves math in its purest form,” said math instructor Alison Moser, who has taught Shari for the past two years. “I envy that.”
Moser says basic classes aren’t enough for Shari. She is currently taking AP Calculus BC, AP Physics C, and an honors research in math, classes filled mostly by seniors. Shari doesn’t seem intimidated by her classes, even though she says she’s a generally shy person.
“You don’t really talk in math,” Shari said. That’s one of the reasons she likes it.
Shari has been an invaluable member of the mathlete team, earning its highest honor last year: the highest score on the California Math League exam. She also scored the highest out of the upper school students who took the test in the American Math Competition.
In the future, Shari hopes to be a mathematician. She would also love to get her hands on an 8x8 Rubik’s Cube if one is ever invented.
She has a head start. Theoretically, she has already solved it.
“I’ll start with the center [of the 8x8 cube], then work on the edges, reducing it to a 3x3, and then solving it from there,” Shari said.
