Domino has long been a popular game among children, but the concept behind the stacking of these flat rectangles goes beyond play. A single domino can hold a great deal of potential energy, and when it falls, it can trigger a chain reaction that leads to much greater—and often disastrous—consequences. This is the underlying idea behind a common phrase, the “domino effect.”

The term domino refers to any of several games played with domino pieces, normally square tiles with a printed value or number of spots, sometimes with a line down the middle to divide them visually into two sections, called ends. Each end typically features one or more dots or pips that indicate the number of adjacent sides that must match in order to form a total value when the domino is placed face up. A domino is ranked or weighted according to its number of pips. A higher ranked domino has more pips and is therefore “heavier” than a lesser ranked one.

There are countless ways to use domino, and most of them require the player to draw and place dominoes edge to edge in rows or columns. The first player to play all of their tiles wins the game. Players may also play games of chance and skill with the pieces, such as matador or muggins, in which the goal is not to match an adjacent tile but to make a number on the open end of a domino equal to some specified total. Many of these games were developed to circumvent religious proscriptions against playing cards.

While a domino is generally used as a game piece, it can also serve as an object of artistic or architectural beauty. Domino pieces can be arranged to form shapes such as hearts or diamonds, and some sets are even used for the creation of intricate mosaics. Dominoes are also commonly used in art and architecture as part of sculptures, bridges and buildings, as well as in the formation of artwork.

Domino is an important component in a number of social sciences and humanities disciplines, such as sociology, economics, history, psychology, philosophy, and law. These areas of study are interested in the way that individuals, groups and societies interact with each other and how these interactions can be analyzed using a variety of methodologies and frameworks.

A key concept that is emphasized in these fields is the notion of interdependence. In addition, they are concerned with how the structure of a system or society impacts its members and their behavior. This is often illustrated by analyzing the behavior of individual dominoes, a process known as modeling.

The ability to model the behavior of a domino is important in business as well, especially when trying to anticipate what might happen if a certain course of action is taken. For example, when Hevesh knocked over a huge row of dominoes in her famous video, it was not because it was a particularly exciting scene, but because it was the start of an intricate chain reaction.