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games and investigations

I love dominoes.  No, not the pizza, but the little things with dots on.  There are lots of mathematical games you can play with them, some of which are here.    

I particularly like threes and fives; I have also played a version where you get points for any odd prime factors.  

You could play a game where students lay them vertically or horizontally on a mxn grid.... the winner is the last one to lay a domino.

If the dots were raised on a domino, could they be used as letters for Braille? If so, why?  Which ones would you use for which letter?

Here's an idea for some investigations by considering them as 2 by 1 'bricks': How many different ways can you arrange them to fill a box (say) 2x4 wide? mxn wide? 

How many different tessellations (brick walls) can you make with dominoes?  Which ones would make better brick walls than others, and why?

stacking dominoes


Watch the video on the right.  It shows students trying to stack dominoes (or CDs) so that no part of the top domino is not directly above the bottom domino.  The picture below shows this done successfully (just)! 
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