Domino is a term that describes a flat thumb-sized, rectangular block of wood or other material, bearing an arrangement of dots or pips on one side and blank on the other, and used in games that involve matching dominoes by their ends or placing them down in lines or angular patterns. A complete set of dominoes contains 28 pieces. The word is also used to refer to any of the many different games played with the tiles, including blocking, scoring, and drawing.
Dominoes are a classic toy that kids have enjoyed since childhood. The thrill of setting up a long line of dominoes, flicking the first one, and watching the entire chain fall is mesmerizing. Today’s Wonder of the Day shows how a domino artist named Lily Hevesh builds mind-blowing displays for movies, television, and events. Some of her creations use hundreds of thousands of dominoes and take several nail-biting minutes to fall.
Creating these elaborate domino setups requires careful planning and execution. Hevesh starts by considering the theme or purpose of an installation and brainstorming images that could convey those ideas. Then she creates a model to test out the layout before building the actual display. When she is satisfied that the design will work, she uses a version of the engineering-design process to lay out the pieces and make sure everything is in place before she begins the domino cascade.
As she pushes the first domino over, it converts some of its potential energy into kinetic energy (energy of motion). This energy is transferred to the next domino, providing the push needed to knock it over. Then the energy flows to the next domino and so on until all the pieces have fallen.
The same kind of chain reaction happens when you write a story. If you want your readers to buy the logic of a scene that runs counter to societal norms, it’s important to show why it makes sense. Without this, your reader will see your hero’s action as immoral and be unable to keep liking him.
In order to successfully navigate a learning challenge, it’s crucial for students to have strong foundational skills to build on. Compensating for a weak skill taxes the student’s working memory capacity, which can impact their ability to learn new information. Over time, compensating for a weak skill can impact the learning of other skills and ultimately limit their overall success. Just like one small domino can impact a whole row of them before it falls, some learning challenges have the potential to affect other areas of a student’s life.