Rubik's Cube Tournament - Winners Meet Professor Erno Rubik

From the USA Science & Engineering Festival:

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--It's the 30th Anniversary of the Rubik's Cube, and the USA Science & Engineering Festival is planning a You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube tournament in Washington, D.C., October of 2010. Teams from Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia are eligible to compete. Here's a video from the first You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube tournament held this spring in San Diego.

Rubik's Cube creator Professor Erno Rubik will receive a Lifetime Science and Math Education Achievement Award from the Festival, for creating a tool that teaches students perseverance as well as fractions, ratios, algebra and geometry. Rubik, a Hungarian professor, is coming to the USA Science & Engineering Festival for his first public appearance at a student competition in more than two decades. You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube winners will receive their awards from Rubik.

The You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube competition will be held on the National Mall during the final two days of the USA Science & Engineering Festival, which runs from Oct. 10-24, 2010. Competition details include:

* Deadline to Sign-Up: Deadline for the USA Science & Engineering Festival's You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube contest is May 31, 2010
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* Eligibility: Teams from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and West Virginia can enter the tournament. There are two competition age brackets: Elementary and middle school students and high school students.

* Tournament Format: Teams will be competing for the fastest time to solve 25 Rubik's Cubes.

* Schedule: The Preliminary Rubik's Cube Tournament is Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010 at the National Electronics Museum and six finalists will compete for the championship on Saturday, Oct. 23, 2010 on the National Mall at the USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo.

* Prizes: Prizes ranging from $100-$1,000 in education grants will be awarded.

Thirty years after its introduction to America, more than 350 million Rubik's Cubes have been sold worldwide. It is used as an educational tool in 50 states, thousands of K-12 schools and hundreds of Boys & Girls Clubs of America as well as the YMCA's after-school programs. The new You CAN Do The Rubik's Cube initiative is a U.S. campaign aimed at teaching youth how to solve the Rubik's Cube as they learn skills such as team work and problem solving.

The USA Science & Engineering Festival is hosted by Lockheed Martin and sponsors include Life Technologies Foundation, Clean Technology and Sustainability Industries Organization (CTSI), Larry and Diane Bock, ResMed Foundation, Farrell Family Foundation, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Agilent Technologies, Amgen, Celgene Corporation, The Dow Chemical Company, National Institutes of Health, Illumina, The Kavli Foundation, Intel Corporation, You CAN Do the Rubik's Cube, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Genentech Inc., MedImmune, Sandia National Laboratories, Project Lead The Way (PLTW), K&L Gates, Baxter International, NuVasive Inc., FEI Company, Case Western Reserve University, Biogen Idec Foundation, LifeStraw®, Microsoft Corporation, Silicon Valley Bank, Bechtel Corporation, SpaceX and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Research in Motion.

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