When a domino hits the ground, its potential energy converts into kinetic energy and pushes its neighbors along. The chain of movement continues until the last domino falls. Dominoes are used in a variety of games and constructions. They have a number of educational benefits for children, such as enhancing their numeric skills, pattern recognition and spatial thinking. They can also be used to practice fine motor skills and problem solving, while promoting creativity and artistic expression.
Dominos is a popular game that requires precise hand movements and a certain amount of patience. It’s also a great way to learn about maths and science. The game’s core strategy is build around the use of numeric patterns, which helps develop addition and counting skills. Dominoes are available in different shapes and sizes, but most are double-sided with a total of nine dots or pips (some may have no pips). They are normally twice as long as wide and can be stacked side by side to form straight or curved lines. Dominoes can also be used to make grids that form pictures, stacked walls or even 3D structures like towers and pyramids.
Dominoes can be played in teams or individually. In a team game, each player has a set of dominoes and the goal is to be the first to reach a set number of points often 61. Each domino has an open end and the value is determined by the number of pips it has (a double counts as two). The total number of pips must be divisible by five or three, and if the total is zero, the game ends in a draw. Points are scored for the first player to touch each of the six open ends in a row, and then again for every pair of adjacent sides touching.
Hevesh, a 20-year-old whose YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, creates mind-blowing domino setups that take hours to complete. She follows a version of the engineering-design process when she builds her creations, identifying the theme or purpose of the installation and brainstorming images that would complement it.
Once Hevesh has a concept in mind, she starts planning out the tracks for her dominoes by drawing a diagram on paper. She’ll also calculate how many dominoes she’ll need for the design and mark where they will be placed. She then begins assembling her dominoes, starting with the highest-value piece (usually a double) and working her way down to the lowest-value pieces.
If you want your story’s scenes to flow smoothly and logically, you need to ensure that the dominoes are properly spaced. For example, if you have a scene where the hero does something immoral but the next scene doesn’t advance the plot enough to justify the action or raise reader tension, readers will be lost and quickly lose interest. The same applies to stories that run contrary to what most readers believe is logical. If you don’t plan out your story ahead of time, as a pantser does, you will probably end up with scenes that are at the wrong angle or don’t have sufficient impact on the scene before and after it.