This is What's Trending Today.
A teenager from the northeast state of New Hampshire has one of the top trending YouTube videos this week.
Lily Hevesh is known as Hevesh5 on YouTube. She is an expert at making domino art.
Dominoes are plastic rectangles used in a game that is popular around the world. The rectangles are white with black dots or black with white dots. They are called tiles.
Players must play one tile at a time, matching one of their tiles with another tile already played.
But there is something else you can do with dominoes. You can place the dominoes upright and knock them down.
One domino falls and knocks down the next domino. The lined-up dominoes create a chain reaction. This is where the expression “domino effect” comes from.
Hevesh is a master at making complex and creative domino art projects. She uses multi-colored dominoes. When they fall down, the design changes color.
Her work has been featured in a car commercial and a popular morning television program.
On Saturday, she released a video of her latest domino project. It is called “The Amazing Triple Spiral.” She made the design using 15,000 dominoes.
It took her 25 hours and eight days to complete the project, she said.
Hevesh laid the dominoes on the floor in a wide spiral pattern. The blocks are all different colors - orange, yellow, blue, red, white, and green. Some of the dominoes are stacked on top of each other.
When she knocks down the first domino, it starts the chain reaction. It lasts for about 90 seconds.
First, the dominoes on the inside part of the spiral fall. Then the dominoes climb a stairway. The dominoes standing higher up on a platform then fall. Then the platform itself falls. The platform was created by placing five layers of dominoes on top of each other.
Hevesh's latest design quickly impressed YouTube viewers. It has been viewed almost 3.5 million times.
One viewer wrote, “I couldn't imagine myself spending 25 hours to build that, even if I had the dominoes.”
Another wrote, “Incredible, a whole new level and very artistic.”
Hevesh once told her local newspaper that the best part about making domino art is “knocking them down and seeing it was successful.”
But, not all of her projects turn out as well as her latest creation.
In August, Hevesh and another domino artist worked on a huge domino tower. The artists were trying to break the world record for the tallest domino tower.
They worked for seven hours putting more than 3,000 dominoes on top of each other. The tower was almost six meters tall.
Then, Hevesh accidentally knocked over the tower. Although they did not break the world record, they still broke the American record for tallest domino tower.
And that's What's Trending Today.
I'm Dan Friedell.
Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.
What did you think of the domino art? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.
Words in This Story
domino - n. a small flat rectangular block made of wood or plastic that has one or more dots on one side and that is used in playing games
dot - n. a small round mark
tile - n. a small, flat piece that is used in some board games
match - v. to have the same appearance, color, etc.
chain reaction - n. a series of events in which each event causes the next one : a series of events caused by one single event
domino effect - n. a circular curving line that goes around a central point while getting closer to or farther away from it
domino effect - expression. an effect produced when one event sets off a series of similar events
spiral - n. a circular curving line that goes around a central point while getting closer to or farther away from it
stack - n. a usually neat pile : a group of things that are put one on top of the other
block - n. a solid piece of material (such as rock or wood) that has flat sides and is usually square or rectangular in shape
platform - n. a flat surface that is raised higher than the floor or ground
layer - n. a covering piece of material or a part that lies over or under another
tower - n. a tall, narrow building or structure that may stand apart from or be attached to another building or structure
