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 and 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.

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.

You don't 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. Alright so i don't -

I'm too scared to move anywhere. Where do we - Where do we go? >> 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 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 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

and we do... DESTIN>> Is that what that is right there? LILY>> Yeah right there in the corner

You'll see if it 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 set up and seriously, please go check out that video on the second channel. It's an awesome

Behind-The-Scenes tour of the whole set up. Every little thing... It's amazing, you're gonna like it.

I learned tons of Domino Builders 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 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 Pokemon 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 - 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 Dominoe

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 so you said every 60 dominoes is one second. STEVE>> Yep. DESTIN>> Really? Is that 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 and

Some of the European Builders actually have this theory that different colors fall at different speeds.

DESTIN>> European Builders think different colours fall at different speeds.

STEVE>> It could be due to the paint being different or the colouring, 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 domino's 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 - what - exactly what it's doing

Oh dude i just had the moment where it all clicks. It's - it's rotating about the center of gravity

It'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 - 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...

It's 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 yhey'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 services 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

Did you know that each time you buy a Casper you get a free time machine? SON>> WHAT?

DESTIN>> I want to thank the sponsor for today's video which is Casper. You can get a mattress at casper.com/smarter

Tara and I have slept on a Casper for over two years

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Of course I actually like it which is why I got one for the guest bedroom

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Get $50 off. There's a lot of cool things about it they'll ship it directly to your house you get to open it up it's kind of fun.

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Support without it being too hot and you get a hundred nights free trial if you don't like it, they'll come pick it up at

Your house you don't have to worry about it. This is my favorite part. I'm not just saying this, I actually do like the product

and when you support the sponsor

You support Smarter Every Day which allows me to do things like support the Zeal Incredible Science Machine which is a really cool way

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.

It's your support of the sponsors that make that sort of thing happen so thank you very much. Also

Go check out that video in the second Channel. It is rad. It's a long video

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.