Domino is a fun, familiar game with many different rules and variants. The word comes from the Latin domino, meaning “tablet.” Players take turns laying down dominoes in a row and scoring according to the number of dots on each end. The first player to score all of their tiles wins the game.
A domino has inertia, a tendency to resist motion when there is no outside force pushing on it. But once a domino is pushed past its tipping point, it can suddenly move rapidly. That’s what makes domino so exciting to watch, and that’s why there are domino shows where builders set up thousands of dominoes in careful sequence, all toppling with the nudge of just one.
At age 10, Hevesh began to collect dominoes and soon started to post videos of her work online. By the time she was 20, she had more than 2 million YouTube subscribers and a career as a professional domino artist. She creates intricate domino setups for movies, TV shows, and events–including an album launch for pop star Katy Perry. Her largest installations can take several nail-biting minutes to fall.
While a Domino’s employee may be working behind the counter in a restaurant, or on an assembly line at a factory, they all contribute to a larger goal of serving customers and creating a safe workplace environment. In addition, Domino’s values include listening to employees and responding quickly to their concerns. For example, after a Domino’s employee in Detroit heard about issues that were making it difficult for them to perform their job, the company implemented changes quickly. This included a relaxed dress code and training programs for new leadership.
Dominoes are also used for educational purposes in classrooms. For example, they can help students understand the commutative property of addition. To do this, the teacher holds up a domino and asks students to count the total number of dots on each end. Then the teacher asks them to name an addition equation that represents the relationship between the total number of dots and the number of dots on each end. The lesson helps students understand that the sum of an additive is the same whether the numbers are reversed or not, and that you can write an addition equation for a domino with any number of dots on either side.
Another use of dominoes is in math lessons, where they can be used to teach students about place value and the number line. For example, the class can play a game called Muggins. To play, each player has a domino and then draws a tile from the draw pile that matches the number on the open end of their dominanto. They then add the number on the open end of their domino to the number on the dominanto they drew. The player who scores the highest wins. This is a great way to practice addition with younger students who aren’t ready to make the jump from using concrete manipulatives to writing equations.