New York teen masters solving a Rubik's Cube with his feet

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - Most people try to solve the beloved Rubik's Cube with their hands. But not Daniel Rose-Levine. This 16-year-old solves it with his feet. Yes, his feet.

"At first it was really hard to do," he said. "It took me like 10 minutes to solve."

The Dutchess County, New York, teen first picked up the cube five years ago while attending math camp.

"I actually started practicing with my feet more because my hands started to hurt from too much hand cubing," Daniel said. "So, for a while, I was only practicing with my feet. And that's when I got really fast enough for the world record."

And then one year ago, Daniel broke the Guinness world record for the fastest time to solve a Rubik's Cube using feet: 16.96 seconds.

"Most people think it's really cool," he said. "Some people think it's gross."

We found Daniel practicing to beat his world record time at the National Museum of Mathematics. The museum highlights math connections throughout our existence, according to associate director Tim Nissen.

"We have people solving Rubik's Cubes, musicians that are mathematically minded," Nissen said. "We've got artists who come and present their work when it has a mathematical component to it."

Daniel was at the museum on Tuesday to demonstrate the mathematical patterns and functions behind successfully solving a Rubik's Cube with feet.

Daniel's mother, Lauren, is a mathematician. She said that cubing has made him mathematically sophisticated.

"We talk about math a lot and he's in an early college now. He's only 16 and he's already taking Calculus 3," she said. "And he doesn't believe this, but cubing really helped develop his mathematical thinking."

While Daniel may be a math-and-cubing whiz, he has plans of a typical teenager.

"I hope to get a driver's license at some point," he said.