250,000 DOMINOES! - The American Domino Record - Smarter Every Day 178

DESTIN>> That's right! You stand on the right. Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. I'm teaching my kids that you're supposed to stand on the right. Stand on the right. He's standing... she's there... you go. All right, we're in Detroit, and we came here to see the American Record for Dominoes toppling. We're really excited about it. There's a young lady on YouTube; her name is Lily, and we watch her videos. We came to learn about dominoes. But first, we're in the Detroit airport, so you have to see this fountain.

What do you call this flow? That flow right there.

SON>> Laminar flow.

DESTIN>> What's it called?

CHILDREN>> Laminar flow.

DESTIN>> Laminar flow. Some Daddies don't teach their kids cool words like this.

SON>> Oh, I already know "Alias."

DESTIN>> Yeah?

SON>> And all that other stuff.

DESTIN>> You don't appreciate this?

What, you don't appreciate laminar flow? I choose to believe that it's not that the laminar flow doesn't impress them; it's that they were turbo excited that we got there a day early in Detroit so we could see a behind-the-scenes look at the largest domino fall in American history. Seriously, these videos get millions of views online, but you don't get to see the people behind it and how much care and time they put into it. That's why we came to Detroit a day early.

Oh my goodness. This is it?

Okay, so you're Lily?

LILY>> Yes, I'm Lily.

DESTIN>> I'm Destin. Nice to meet you. All right, so I don't—I'm too scared to move anywhere. Where do we—where do we go?

LILY>> You can stay outside of the caution tape.

DESTIN>> Outside of the caution tape.

LILY>> Walk along here.

DESTIN>> Okay... this is way... way more impressive in person. You know what I mean?

LILY>> Yeah, it's different when you actually see it live.

DESTIN>> Yeah, like I've seen—I've seen your videos—a lot of your videos, but this is insane. This is what you did for us. That's crazy. So this is the night before the competition, or it's not a competition?

LILY>> It's an event.

DESTIN>> It's an event.

STEVE>> Or a demonstration.

DESTIN>> A demonstration? Ok.

STEVE>> By the way, we have the floor plan right here.

DESTIN>> That's the floor plan?

STEVE>> Yeah, I designed the setup this year.

DESTIN>> Oh wow! If somebody were to mess up and knock over one thing, how do you keep it from moving on to the other ones? You've gotta have like—there's got to be a domino builder terminology, like safeties or—

LILY>> We call it a safety gap, where you take like six dominoes out, and because there's a gap, if you knock it down, it'll stop at the gap.

DESTIN>> Is that what that is right there?

LILY>> Yeah, right there in the corner. You'll see if it falls this way, it won't continue. So at the end, we just fill in all the gaps very carefully, and this way just like a small portion of the domino setup will be toppled if we do knock it down by accident instead of the whole thing.

DESTIN>> And this is like—this is your "thing," right? This is what you're good at?

BOTH>> Yeah.

DESTIN>> How long have you guys been working together?

STEVE>> Three years now. Yeah, we've each been building for over ten years. We've been working together for three years, and we've done lots of professional projects for companies where we build advertisements, logos, and things like that.

DESTIN>> Will you walk me through what we have right now? Steve and Lilly showed me around the entire setup, and seriously, please go check out that video on the second channel. It's an awesome behind-the-scenes tour of the whole setup. Every little thing... It's amazing, you're gonna like it. I learned tons of domino builder secrets that I had never thought about before.

For example, these guys make custom tools out of Lego so they can speed up the process and make nice neat lines. Check out how they make pictures. Steve wrote an entire computer program that would translate pixels into dominoes. The next day, we got there early and got to meet the entire team.

On the count of three, say your name. One, two, three... (names)

Yeah, nice to meet you. So anyway, how many hours do you think, like man-hours/woman-hours, do you think this represents?

STEVE>> Seven days times 12 hours (Mumbling). Domino people are very precise people, so you can't just ask a question and get a quick answer; you have to get the actual answer—1512 hours.

There's two American records in this particular fall, right?

STEVE>> Three.

DESTIN>> Three? Yeah, okay, what are they?

STEVE>> Okay, so the first one is most total dominoes toppled in America.

DESTIN>> Just like in general?

STEVE>> Yep, in one complete fall down. The second American record is the domino—largest domino field.

DESTIN>> That's the white rain there, right?

STEVE>> So that's the Pokémon field that has over 12,000 dominoes.

DESTIN>> Okay.

STEVE>> And the third record is the largest domino structure in America, which is game over, which is the finale.

DESTIN>> So that's the largest three-dimensional wall structure in America?

STEVE>> Yep, but that also has over 12,000 dominoes.

DESTIN>> So this is pretty fun. You get all these people showing up to see this, and then you get the domino team over there. They're getting in the zone. It's really fun to watch.

What do you think?

LILY>> I feel amazing. This toppled without any breaks at all, and I'm just—I'm so happy right now.

DESTIN>> Oh wait, so you said every 60 dominoes is one second.

STEVE>> Yep.

DESTIN>> Really? Is that a constant?

STEVE>> No, it's not a constant.

DESTIN>> What do you mean?

STEVE>> It really depends on a lot of different things, like the friction on the floor is probably the biggest thing. The spacing of the dominoes is another thing, obviously. When they're more far apart, they fall slower. Some of the European builders actually have this theory that different colors fall at different speeds.

DESTIN>> European builders think different colors fall at different speeds?

STEVE>> It could be due to the paint being different or the coloring, the dye, whatever is used. It could have slightly different mass. Maybe that's it.

DESTIN>> Okay, will you send me different color dominoes and build me a gauge stick so I could do it in a high-speed video?

Okay, I'm in the garage; we're about to do a domino motion analysis. I want you to look at Trent's hat. Look at this hat—do you like it? It's great. It looks like something you would wear wherever you're doing domino motion analysis.

Okay, so here is the high-speed camera. What we're gonna do is—this is what I call the Swagger Stick that Steve sent me. It's an index so you can set up the dominoes and set them up the same every time.

We've got a ruler for motion analysis here, and we can change out the type of material that we're knocking the dominoes over on. We've got different kinds of felts and things like that. We've got this dry erase board, we've got some metal down here... we're gonna look at all the variables.

TRENT>> Here we go.

DESTIN>> And we're going in. It's pivoting about... that's exactly what it's doing. Oh dude, I just had the moment where it all clicks. It's rotating about the center of gravity. That's exactly what's happening.

As it's falling, you have translation and rotation, and so that front edge is a pivot point. But if there's not enough friction... are you seeing it? Yeah, it's trying to rotate about its center of gravity if there's not enough friction.

Let's put the foam or paper towel down so it can't slip and it's not gonna rotate. That's gonna translate more of that energy forward, isn't it? So it's faster on a grippy surface.

No?

Yeah? On the felt surface, the bottom of the domino is slipping backwards again, but it catches due to higher friction. So the question is, because it's slipping less, does that mean the whole line is going to topple forward faster?

So just did a hard plastic and a clear plastic side-by-side, and right at the end, you can see—it's very, very clear... There's a difference.

Back it up, back it up. Did you see the clear in the back? The clear plastic ones kick out more, so maybe they're slower.

Do you want a domino to grip or not grip?

Dunno... So clear dominoes are heavier, and they go faster. That—that is counterintuitive.

So it's 4 A.M. Smarter Every Midnight.

Okay, look, I feel like I owe you an apology because on Smarter Every Day, when I break out the high-speed camera, it's like the mysteries of the universe are revealed.

But when I turn it on this little block of plastic, we only get more questions. For example, the first 20 dominoes in our setup—it's accelerating, so we're not getting a steady state velocity of the topple until after that. So I think my setup is inadequate to do what we're trying to do.

I mean, also the fact that this thing doesn't pivot like a hinge like every research paper says it does; it slips. We're in an area of physics now called tribology, which is the study of two frictional surfaces in relative motion. This is complicated. There's a lot more Greek letters in the math now.

Another thing, like right here, the way I've been triggering this—I've been touching that. That's inconsistent how I'm doing that. If you have better ideas, I feel like we need to redo this entire setup and do it right.

So if you would, leave comments below on ideas for how to trigger that, things on the setup. I want to do this right, but for right now, I mean, we've done complicated things on Smarter Every Day. But the simple domino—the simple domino is a challenge.

It's hard stuff for really neat smaller YouTube channels like Lily and Steve to create videos that they love. They make good stuff. I think the reason it's so good is because they are seriously passionate about dominoes, and that is contagious.

But I learned stuff I have never ever thought about in my entire life. New stacking methods, how they index them, the speed of dominoes? It's really fun. I think you'll really enjoy it.

Feel free to subscribe if this earned it; if not, no big deal. I'm Destin, and you're getting Smarter Every Day. Have a good one now.

Thank you very much for letting me do that. So this—you did that last year too, right?

LILY>> Yep.

DESTIN>> You know I'm actually changing the logo on Smarter Every Day after this video. This video is like the last video using this logo. It's going to be something similar.