Domino, or dominoes, are small rectangular blocks with a total of 28 tiles that are either blank or bear an arrangement of dots (the same as the spots on a die) on one side and a line or ridge running vertically down their face. When a single tile is pushed on, its adjacent neighbors will also fall over and create a long chain or “domino effect.” Dominoes can be used for a variety of games that require reasoning and strategy.
Most of us are familiar with the classic game of domino, in which players take turns placing one domino on top of another until a line of them reaches the end of a row. The last domino to touch the row scores points and the goal is to score more points than your opponent.
Hevesh’s mind-blowing domino constructions are a visual display of how the domino effect works, but they can also serve as an analogy for many other actions that cascade in the same way. In a novel, for example, each scene domino—whether it’s an action or a dialogue—is ineffective by itself, but when all the scene dominos work together, they naturally influence the next scene.
When Hevesh first designs a mind-blowing domino setup, she follows a version of the engineering-design process: First, she considers what theme or purpose she might want to convey with the installation. Then she brainstorms images or words that might best fit that theme. Finally, she decides on a design and calculates how many dominoes will be needed for that particular layout.
Dominoes are a great tool for teaching basic addition and subtraction, but they can also be used to help students understand fractions. The teacher chooses a domino from the stack and holds it up to the class, letting them name the number of dots on it. Then, the teacher draws that number on a blank domino and writes the corresponding equation. Students can then try to match up dominoes with the corresponding equations.
The most common form of the domino game is played with a double-six set of 28 tiles that are shuffled into a stock or boneyard, and each player then draws seven tiles from the boneyard. The rest of the tiles remain in the boneyard until a player wins by having all their tiles in play at once.
Many different types of games can be played with a double-six set. Some are blocking or scoring games, while others involve matching pairs of identically numbered tiles (ones touching other ones, twos touching fours). The most popular, perhaps, is the simple game of domino concentration, in which the players draw a tile and then, depending on the number written on that tile, perform certain exercises, such as jumping jacks, leg kicks, fist twists, etc.
Dominoes aren’t just for playing, though; they can also be used to make art! Some people enjoy making curved lines of dominoes that form pictures, while others like creating intricate 3D structures out of them. You can find all sorts of guides online for designing the ultimate domino art, and even purchase a set of brightly colored dominoes in order to create your own masterpiece.