Understanding the science behind dominoes elevates it from a fun household game to an exquisite example of friction at work. So how? There are two main places where friction takes place. The first one is when the dominoes rub together as they collapse. The second one is when the dominoes slide along the surface as they fall to hit the domino after it. To make the physics of dominoes more tangible, scientists created a digital model.
“It’s a problem that’s so natural. Everybody plays with dominoes,” David Cantor, a researcher at Polytechnique Montreal in Canada who has a history with civil engineering, said. Cantor teamed up with his friend Kajetan Wojtacki, a worker at the Institute of Fundamental Research, under the division of the Polish Academy of Sciences, located in Warsaw. Together, they made a model online showing a row of dominoes collapsing–a chain reaction.
They were inspired by a YouTube channel called SmarterEveryDay. From the research they did, Cantor and Wotjacki discovered that the speed of the dominoes falling one after the other depended on friction; they reported their findings in the June Physical Review Applied. Cantor’s and Wotjacki’s online computer model showed the fastest way a row of dominoes could fall.
The speediest fall happened when special slippery dominoes were placed very closely together on a rough surface made of felt. Since the dominoes were slicker, that meant less friction took place between all the dominoes. Less energy would be lost when the dominoes toppled on top of each other. Plus, the dominoes were set up on a surface that had a lot of friction, so the dominoes didn’t slide too far back as they collapsed. Sliding backward would slow down the entire chain reaction.
Even with their fantastic findings, Cantor and Wotjacki also experienced many problems with their test model runs. For example, when the dominoes were spaced far apart on a slippery surface, the model would sometimes stop short because the dominoes did not hit each other, due to the backsliding. The two used math to come up with an equation that could tell someone how fast the dominoes would fall under different situations, which matched previous tests. Dominoes is not just a game, there’s science behind it too! So next time you pull out your box of dominoes, remember: friction is an important part that can make your domino chain go faster!
“It’s a problem that’s so natural. Everybody plays with dominoes,” David Cantor, a researcher at Polytechnique Montreal in Canada who has a history with civil engineering, said. Cantor teamed up with his friend Kajetan Wojtacki, a worker at the Institute of Fundamental Research, under the division of the Polish Academy of Sciences, located in Warsaw. Together, they made a model online showing a row of dominoes collapsing–a chain reaction.
They were inspired by a YouTube channel called SmarterEveryDay. From the research they did, Cantor and Wotjacki discovered that the speed of the dominoes falling one after the other depended on friction; they reported their findings in the June Physical Review Applied. Cantor’s and Wotjacki’s online computer model showed the fastest way a row of dominoes could fall.
The speediest fall happened when special slippery dominoes were placed very closely together on a rough surface made of felt. Since the dominoes were slicker, that meant less friction took place between all the dominoes. Less energy would be lost when the dominoes toppled on top of each other. Plus, the dominoes were set up on a surface that had a lot of friction, so the dominoes didn’t slide too far back as they collapsed. Sliding backward would slow down the entire chain reaction.
Even with their fantastic findings, Cantor and Wotjacki also experienced many problems with their test model runs. For example, when the dominoes were spaced far apart on a slippery surface, the model would sometimes stop short because the dominoes did not hit each other, due to the backsliding. The two used math to come up with an equation that could tell someone how fast the dominoes would fall under different situations, which matched previous tests. Dominoes is not just a game, there’s science behind it too! So next time you pull out your box of dominoes, remember: friction is an important part that can make your domino chain go faster!
