How are people able to solve a Rubix Cube in only a few seconds?
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In order to solve a cube you need to learn some ‘algorithms’. These are basically a sequence of ‘turns’ that does a specific thing. A turn is just twisting one side of the cube 90 degrees clockwise or anti-clockwise, or turning it 180 degrees. normally an algorithm is around 8 to 12 turns. So a certain algorithm will do something like twist 3 of the corner pieces, or swap two edge pieces.
When you are first learning you only need to learn a hand full of algorithms to solve the cube, but advanced cubers will learn literally 100s of different algorithms that solve very specific cases. E.g. one alg might swap 3 edges into their correct place, while also twisting 2 corners and swapping them. Only useful for that exact case, but they know different algs for all the different cases.
here is a page listing some algs: http://algdb.net/puzzle/333
Once you know a bunch of algs, you then need to practice a lot to recognise the specific case you are in and which alg you need to use and be able to perform it physically very quickly (using what are know as finger tricks) top cubers will do 10+ turns per second.
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