General Discussion : 49758


General / 49758

*Is lego truly* unlimited? (some thoughts)** —Samarth Moray
I was just wondering today about how much lego is trumpeted as having an 'unlimited' number of possibilites. Now I'm no math whiz, but it seemed logically impossible to me. So here's some food for thought for the gurus out there to digest and make (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general, lugnet.build)

	Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —James Mastros
	(...) Ahh, but that isn't true -- rotate one of the pieces. There are, in fact, an infinite number of ways to connect those two 1 x 1 bricks. (Of course, you probably can't tell the difference between two 1x1 bricks connected at 22 degrees and (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)

	Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Olof Dahlberg
	(...) Hello. Very interesting question. Just the selection of pieces from a collection generates a very large amount of possibilities; Selecting 10 pieces from a collection of 100 (different) pieces generates 100!/(90!10!)=1009...0309456440 (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)

		Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Samarth Moray
		SNIPPY (...) Hi All, This is exactly the answer I was looking for. Thanks, Olof! Now to the others, (I'll write one reply, cause it's easier when youre not a member :-l) although you could combine 2 1 x 1 bricks in infinite number of ways by (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general, FTX)

	Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Cary Clark
	(...) ... (...) Two 1x1 bricks can be connected together in an infinite number of ways. The top brick can be rotated freely to any angle and still connect, and the angles are countless. Given a 10 piece collection of different parts, the number of (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)

		Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Juergen Stuber
		(...) I'd say there are 1024, you probably left out the empty MOC :-) JÃ¼rgen (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)

	Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —David Koudys
	(...) I received a little LEGO brochure years ago that said something like 8 standard 2x4 bricks can be joined together (standard LEGO building techiques--not these 'rotate on a stud, therefore infinite) over a million different ways. That's 8 (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)

	Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Ted Michon
	(...) The permutations when making only right angle stud connections with less than 1000 2x4s far exceeds the number of atoms in the universe or nanoseconds in the age of the universe (heck, probabably ALL the universes in Heinlen's Number of the (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general, FTX)

	Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Anders Isaksson
	(...) Of course the number of combinations isn't 'unlimited', but if it takes more time than the life of the universe to check them out, it's 'practically unlimited'. (...) Not counting the endles possibilities of rotating one part :-) Take a look (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)

	Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —David Eaton
	(...) Well, 1st off, there's probably on the order of several hundred billion pieces on the planet. I remember reading in some FAQ the estimated number of pieces in the world, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. I know they make about 20 (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)

		Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Ray Sanders
		(...) The 2004 LEGO Company Profile white-paper says "Over the years, enough LEGO bricks have been manufactured to give an average of 52 each to every single one of the world's 6 billion inhabitants." Another place indicates "Annual production is (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

		Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Samarth Moray
		(...) Hi David, Thats why I said something more finite, like our collections would be easier/possible to calculate. (...) All that fancy math........ (...) I shouldve x-posted there in the beginning. Thanks, Samarth (20 years ago, 9-Dec-04, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

		Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —David Eaton
		(...) Ok, so it's asymptotic, not logarithmic, and it approaches 4, so 4 was a perfectly cromulent guess. However. Since the sum of any line N of Pascal's triangle is apparently 2^N (starting at row 0), and you'd theoretically count EVERYTHING (...) (20 years ago, 9-Dec-04, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

			*Re: Googolplex (was: Is lego truly* unlimited?)** —Ross Crawford
			(...) I found the following amusing description of how to visualise a googolplex: "...if one put this black hole into a hypothetical rigid nonpermeable box, a few million light years in size, and looked at the contents once a year, it would look (...) (20 years ago, 9-Dec-04, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

				Re: Googolplex (was: Is lego truly unlimited?) —David Eaton
				(...) build' question, given that it only obtains a googolplex by measuring the number of "distinct" states by a wholly ridiculous number of particles. And try as I might, I can't get the number of Lego configurations to get much beyond (...) (20 years ago, 10-Dec-04, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

	Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Rob Hendrix
	(...) From Hitchhiker's guide: "Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?" "I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the (...) (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)

		Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —David Koudys
		(...) Is that a piece of fairy cake? Dave K (20 years ago, 8-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)

		Re: Is lego truly unlimited? (some thoughts) —Samarth Moray
		(...) Well, uh- yeah, hence I posted here. Samarth (20 years ago, 9-Dec-04, to lugnet.general)