by Dominos – The word domino is often used to refer to a set of dominoes or a game played with them, but it also has several other meanings. From its Latin root dominus, meaning “lord,” domino has long been associated with cause and effect, as well as with power. Today, the word is most commonly used to describe a person who controls others or situations and knows what is likely to happen.
Dominoes are rectangular pieces of wood or clay with a smooth surface. They are marked on one side with a number of spots, called pips, and on the other side by an empty space or a circle. The number of pips on a domino indicates its value, and the absence of pips is equal to zero. The pips are uniformly molded or drilled and painted, and dominoes come in various colors, though the most common are white dominoes with black pips. The most basic domino set contains 28 tiles that form the stock or boneyard, from which each player draws seven dominoes for his hand. The first player begins play by placing a domino, positioning it so that it touches one end of an existing chain of dominoes.
When a tile is placed, it must be aligned so that its matching ends are touching fully and are not separated by any other pieces (unless it is a double). The chain grows in length as players place more tiles to touch the chain. In addition to forming chains, dominoes can be arranged in various ways to form patterns and other shapes. For example, a player can set up an “L” shape by arranging the two ends of a pair of dominoes to meet at their center point, or a domino can be arranged in a grid that forms a picture when it falls.
In most games of domino, the winners are those who have the fewest number of total pips in their remaining hands when play reaches a point at which no player can continue. Some games, such as bergen and muggins, count the sum of all the pips on the remaining tiles in the losing players’ hands. Others, such as Five-Up, require that the winner has a certain number of pips on all his remaining dominoes.
Although most people think of domino as a game that requires skill and strategy, the fact is that even the simplest domino can be fascinating to watch fall. This is because, as a University of Toronto physicist points out, dominoes convert potential energy into kinetic energy, or the energy of motion, as they move from upright to down. As each domino topples, some of this energy is transferred to the next domino, providing the push that causes it to fall as well. This chain reaction continues until the last domino has fallen. This is why it’s so exciting to see a domino installation in action. Lily Hevesh, who creates mind-blowing domino installations, uses a sort of engineering-design process when creating her setups. She tests each section separately to make sure it works before assembling the entire installation.
