Twenty seconds was all it took for Christina Xu to solve a Rubik’s Cube, earning her second place at a competition at Gateway Mall when the senior at Lincoln East High School was in the sixth grade.
Rubik’s Cubes are still part of Xu’s life, but in a much different way.
Xu is the president of the Computer Science Club at Lincoln East, which works to craft large pictures made out of hundreds of Rubik’s Cubes multiple times a year. This month, Xu chose a festive picture of the Peanuts characters Snoopy and Woodstock sitting in a bright orange pumpkin for a Halloween theme.
In the past, the club has often chosen designs featuring ghosts or animals, but this is the second time one of the pictures has featured Snoopy, a character Xu said many of the teachers love.
“The principal really likes Snoopy, and so do all of the teachers,†Xu said. “So I've just been picking Snoopy designs.â€
Last Spring, the club created Snoopy with a bouquet of flowers, and this winter, they plan to portray Snoopy hanging Christmas stockings.
To create the sculpture, the 25 or so club members work to solve one side of the six-sided cubes, careful to ensure each square has the correct color in the correct spot for the picture they’re trying to convey.
Before they even start solving cubes, however, Xu goes through an extensive design process. First, she picks three pictures and sends them to the principal, who chooses the final image.
Xu then gets to work altering the picture to make its hues match the red, blue, yellow, white, orange and green colors of a Rubik’s Cube.
Once that's done, she puts the image into a computer program that pixelates the photo and puts it into a grid, making it easier to see exactly how each Rubik’s Cube needs to be solved.
Every Rubik's Cube has six sides with nine individual squares on it. In the grid format, club members can see the pattern and color needed on each cube in order to create their picture.Â
For example, for the Halloween image, the cubes that make up the background were entirely blue, while the cube forming part of Snoopy's nose had white, blue and orange squares on it.
On average, it only takes a couple of hours to solve the hundreds of Rubik’s Cubes with the help of the whole club, Xu said. When they're all solved, the cubes are stacked on top of each other inside a custom-made wooden display case in the commons area.
But, after all of the club's hard work, Snoopy and Woodstock won't be displayed for long.
Fall-themed Snoopy will soon be swapped out for a holiday-themed Snoopy just in time for December.
Photos: Inside the new Standing Bear High School in southeast Lincoln