Domino is a small, thumb-sized rectangular block of wood or other material, bearing from one to six pips or dots. A complete set of dominoes has 28 pieces. A person who has a set of dominoes can play games that involve laying them down in lines and angular patterns. People also use them to make artistic creations and other works of art.
The moment a domino topples, it unleashes a chain reaction, much like a firing neuron in your brain. The energy from the first domino passes to the next domino, and then the next, until each has sufficient momentum to push the other over and start another domino chain.
Hevesh takes a similar approach to creating her mind-blowing domino installations. She test-runs each section to make sure it works properly, and she films each step of the process so she can adjust the setup quickly if something goes wrong.
Once she has all the elements in place, Hevesh starts by placing her largest 3-D sections. She then adds flat arrangements and, finally, lines of dominoes that connect all the sections together. As each layer grows, Hevesh has to pay particular attention to the way the dominoes fit together. For example, she needs to ensure that any open ends of a double are covered by the adjacent tile so they can be used again.
In some domino games, players score points by laying tiles end to end, with the exposed ends matching (one’s touching one’s, two’s touching two’s, and so on). Then they count the number of dots on the exposed ends of each tile. The player who scores the most points in a certain number of rounds wins the game. In other games, the number of pips on each domino is a different scoring system (for example, a 6-3-6 counts as 12).
When Hevesh knocks over her creations, she releases the potential energy stored in all those dominoes. That energy turns into kinetic energy, which is the energy of motion. Then the kinetic energy travels from domino to domino, causing each to move a little bit until they have enough momentum to overcome inertia and fall over.
