Domino is a game of chance and strategy played on a tabletop with dominoes that feature a pattern of spots or pips on one side and are blank or identically patterned on the other. Each domino has a directional mark on it that indicates its placement in a line of play. Some dominoes also have a number that appears on the end of the exposed face of the domino (normally in the shape of a zero). The pips on a domino give it a unique identity, distinguishing it from its neighbor in a line of dominoes. The basic goal of the game is to score points by laying all the dominoes in your hand end-to-end without leaving any unused ends. The player with the most points wins. Various scoring methods are used.
Players begin the game with a certain amount of dominoes, with two players starting with 7 dominoes, three players with 5 dominoes and four players with 3 dominoes. When a player cannot play a domino, they pass their turn to another player. The player who plays the first domino in a line of play establishes the direction of that line of play. Once the first domino is placed, a new line of play can only be established from that point forward. The player who plays the last domino in a line of play establishes its direction as well.
When the first domino falls, it carries with it a pulse of energy that travels to the next domino. Some of that energy translates to kinetic energy, which gives the next domino its push toward the ground as it tumbles down the line. As the process repeats, each domino contributes a little bit of energy to the next until, finally, the entire domino chain falls.
A domino is much more powerful than we realize. A 1983 study by University of British Columbia physicist Lorne Whitehead demonstrated that a single domino could knock down objects up to one-and-a-half times its size.
Many different games are played with dominoes, from simple doubling-up to the intricate and complex. Each type of game uses a particular scoring method and helps children build their counting skills. A few examples include bergen and muggins, which determines the number of points scored by counting the pips in the losing players’ hands; blocking games like matador, chicken foot and Mexican train; and counting-based games such as draw and dominoing.
Although some sets of dominoes are crafted from plastic, dominoes have been traditionally made from a wide variety of materials, including silver lip ocean pearl oyster shell (mother of pearl); ivory; woods such as ebony and bone; marble; and metals such as brass and pewter. Sets crafted from these natural materials tend to be more expensive than those made from polymer.
When using dominoes for a learning activity, teachers can help students understand the commutative property of addition by asking them to create equations with a specific set of dominoes. For example, when a student chooses a domino from a stack and holds it up to the light, she calls out the total number of dots on that domino. Then, she orients the domino differently and calls out the total number of dots on its other end. Students quickly learn that the sum of all the dots on a domino is the same regardless of how the domino is oriented.