Domino, from the Latin dominum meaning “powerful” or “heavy,” is a generic term for a series of rectangular blocks with a line down the middle. Like dice and playing cards, dominoes can be used to play a variety of games. Dominos also have a more practical use, providing a way to practice balance and stability while developing motor skills. Dominoes can be arranged to form 3D structures such as towers and pyramids, or curved lines that can form pictures when they fall. The pieces can be stacked in a variety of ways to create a track for a domino race.
The word and the game have many different origins, but they both share a heritage from the same source — the Chinese invention of a tile-based board game called mah-jong in the 1300s. The most common type of domino consists of twenty-eight rectangular tiles with a number of dots, or pips, on each end. These markings were originally designed to represent the results of throwing a die; later, they came to symbolize numbers such as five and three, with the number one indicated by a blank (or zero) square.
In the Western world, dominoes are most often used for positional games where a player places a domino edge to edge against another in such a way that the adjacent faces are either identical or form some specified total. In this way, a player can remove all of their opponent’s tiles and win the game. In addition to traditional positional games, a number of scoring and blocking games are played with dominoes.
For example, in the scoring game bergen and muggins, players alternately place their tiles on the ends of a row of already placed dominoes. Points are scored when the sum of the two end tiles is divisible by either five or three. Alternatively, points can be scored by counting the number of pips in a lost player’s hand.
A more practical application of the domino principle is the Domino Effect, a phenomenon whereby one thing can cause a chain reaction of other things to happen. For example, a small domino knocked over by a finger can trigger a car crash, a rocket launch or a trip to the zoo.
In a business sense, the Domino Effect is a principle that explains why it is important to build an organization from the bottom up and give employees authority. The concept can be applied to an entire company or a single department.
This was the principle behind a recent episode of the television show Undercover Boss, where Domino’s CEO Don Meij went undercover to observe how his employees worked at various Domino’s restaurants and delivery services. His goal was to learn what needed to be changed in the company so it could be more successful.
Hevesh uses a Domino Designer software program to plan the layout of her domino tracks and structures. She tests each section of her designs individually and films them in slow motion to ensure that the arrangement works properly before putting it together. In doing so, she can make adjustments quickly before the final installation is made.