A small rectangular block, usually made of wood or plastic, with a line down the middle that separates each end into two squares. The squares are blank or marked with an arrangement of dots resembling those on dice, called pips. A domino is used for playing a variety of games. A complete set of dominoes consists of 28 such pieces.
Lily Hevesh started collecting dominoes as a child and eventually became a professional domino artist, building spectacular setups for movies and events. She has also been featured on television and YouTube, where she demonstrates how to make complex creations using hundreds of dominoes.
She uses her dominoes to show the power of the Domino Effect, the phenomenon where one action causes many other actions to follow in a sequence that can have catastrophic results. As a writer, I often use this analogy to explain how important it is for writers to think carefully about each scene and how it relates to the scene that comes before and after it.
The classic domino game involves placing a single domino on a line or in a shape and then tipping it over, causing the rest of the dominoes to fall in a chain reaction. The result can be stunning, with the entire domino line falling in a cascade of rhythmic movement. When the first domino is tipped over, it stores energy as potential energy until it reaches its lowest point and then converts that energy into kinetic energy, causing it to fall.
Like a brick, a domino has potential energy until it is tipped over, converting it to kinetic energy, resulting in the chain reaction of dominoes that falls. It takes a large amount of force to flip the first domino, but once it is over, the other dominoes will quickly fall after it.
Similarly, a chain reaction can be stopped by removing the last domino in the sequence. Just as a nerve impulse can be stopped by resetting the ions in the cell, stopping the signal from propagating further down its axon, so a domino effect can stop a story.
In addition to the traditional blocking and scoring games, there are also many other games that involve placing dominoes on the table and then tripping them over so they cover each other, adding up to larger chains or structures. The most common are a form of concentration and a variation on solitaire, both of which can be played with a standard double-six domino set. Larger sets can be extended by introducing ends with more than six spots, allowing for more combinations of dominoes and games. The largest of these is known as a double-18, which contains 190 dominoes. These are not common in practice because a full set would be very difficult to manage. A more convenient option is to use a double-twelve set or even a double-nine. This allows for a smaller number of tiles while still providing enough to play most domino games.