A domino is a small ceramic or plastic rectangle marked with spots (or dots) on one side, used as the starting point for building longer chains of tiles that can be easily tipped over and for various games. Most domino sets contain 28 tiles; larger sets may contain more or fewer. Each tile features two sides with different numbers of spots – as more sides a domino has, the more complex its design becomes.
The word domino derives its name from Latin dominus, which translates to “lord” or “master.” Due to its association with blocking games, domino can serve as a reminder that even small actions can have big repercussions.
Dominoes are most often played in long lines, creating patterns as simple or elaborate as desired. Dominoes can form patterns ranging from straight or curved lines, grids that build pictures when falling, towers and pyramids, etc. Domino art has also gained widespread acclaim; people arrange pieces to form designs they photograph and share online.
As well as blocking and scoring games, dominoes offer other forms of gaming fun such as solitaire and trick-taking games – often adaptations of card games that were popular in places where religious prohibitions prevented playing them directly.
Domino players often make the game of dominoes an engaging challenge by building and dismantling complex structures on the table from dominoes, such as walls, towers, or castles – with the aim of knocking them down before your opponent does! One popular domino variant in America is domino blocks which feature in this same strategy game.
Untipped dominoes can still be used to form chains of dominoes by adding new pieces to the end of each line, enabling players to add onto a growing pile until it becomes unmanageable and collapses; this phenomenon is commonly known as “beaking.”
Dominoes feature a high center of gravity, meaning even slight tips will cause gravity to take hold and bring them crashing down. Recently, University of British Columbia physicist demonstrated this power by setting up 13 massive dominoes which could be overturned with even minimal pressure applied by hand.
Morris set up 13 dominoes that stood three feet tall and weighed 100 pounds each, each taking nearly equal force to topple than would have been needed to move a Tic Tac.
A domino needed only 5 millimeters to be moved forward before it passed its weight and momentum onto the next domino in line, then to all subsequent dominoes in its path – this phenomenon, known as “The Domino Effect,” illustrates an essential principle of physics – small actions can have massively multiplicative results than expected.