When it comes to dominoes, the possibilities are endless. You can create a line of them in a circle or use them to form another shape. You can set them up to block a path or let them zigzag across the table. And you can even play games with them that require strategy or math skills. But no matter how intricate your domino setup is, one physical phenomenon is essential: gravity.
Hevesh is known for her elaborate domino creations, some of which can take several nail-biting minutes to fall. But when she talks about the biggest challenges in her work, she points to physics.
In order to create her incredible domino installations, Hevesh has to carefully plan out each section. This involves determining the amount of power each piece will need to fall and making sure the entire design will still work once it is complete. She has also filmed each segment of her larger installations so she can look at the sequence in slow motion, allowing her to make precise adjustments.
But while she can see how a project is going to go, there are still a lot of things that can go wrong, especially when working with so many individual pieces. Hevesh’s process also involves a lot of trial and error. For example, when she first started working on a circular arrangement, it took her a while to get the dominoes to fit together properly. Once she got it right, though, the whole thing fell into place quickly.
During a game of domino, players take turns drawing tiles from the stock and playing them on the table to build up a chain of dots. The end of each tile shows a number and the goal is to match up these numbers by placing tiles with matching ends on either side of the existing chain. If a player is able to do this, they will win the game.
Each game of domino has its own rules, and some may include a scoring system. The winning player is usually determined by counting the pips on the tiles left in the losing players’ hands at the end of the hand or game. The number of pips that have been counted is sometimes called the “score.”
While there are many different ways to play domino, most of these games share some similar rules. After the stock has been shuffled, the first player draws a tile from the stock and, depending on the game’s rules, makes the first play. The remaining tiles in the stock are then reshuffled and drawn as necessary to break any ties.
Many domino games are played with a set of twenty-eight tiles. This is a small number when playing with more than four people, so many of these sets are “extended” to include additional tiles. The most common extended domino sets are double-nine (55 tiles), double-12, and double-18 (190 tiles). Each of these additional sets adds three more unique combinations of ends to the original set.