How many Rubik's Cube combinations are there?

...Well, lets start off easier and ask how many ways you can put the stickers on. If you number the stickers of each color 1-9, so that all 54 stickers are unique, there are about 231 duovigintillion ways to put them on the cube. That's 231 followed by a whopping 69 zeros. Let's get more complicated and ask how many ways you can arrange the pieces on it (now without numbering them). There are 8 corner pieces that can each be turned in 3 ways while in one spot, 12 edge pieces that can each be turned in 2 ways, and there are the center pieces that never change position. With that, there are about 519 quintillion (519 followed by 18 zeros) ways you can arrange the pieces on the cube. In order to get the real answer for the number of combinations on a Rubik's Cube, you have to take into account the fact that you can't get to every arrangement just by twisting the cube. I don't quite understand the math for this part, but Numberphile has made a video about it, revealing that there are exactly 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 Rubik's Cube combinations, or about 43 quintillion.

Here's a few Rubik's Cube videos made by Numberphile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV9k6dRQQe4&list=PLt5AfwLFPxWJNAdHv8TUCOmj7iKqyHZeg

How long would it take to figure out you iPhone pass code lock?

...Well, the most time it could possibly take to guess someone's pass code would be just over 5 1/2 hours, and that's if it took half a second to press each number and you tried every single possible combination and did it nonstop. Let's also ignore the fact that an iOS device locks you out if you get the pass code wrong too many times. Not to mention you're probably going to mess up at some point with 10,000 combinations. The way you would do it would be to start with 0000, then 0001, then 0002, and so on until you reach 9999. But then a lot of people will have repeating numbers for their pass codes like 9999, so it would be a good idea to try those first, not that you should actually try to break into someone's iPhone. See you next time, and don't spend 5 1/2 hours trying to break into someone's iPhone! It's not worth it!

P.S. If you saw when I had this post up before, I was completely oblivious to the fact that there was actually a 0 on the pass code keypad. All good now!