This perpetual LEGO domino toppling machine is hypnotic

A LEGO builder likes to topple dominos but isn’t so keen on settling them up again. So he built a machine out of LEGO that works on an infinite loop.

By a show of hands, who likes to watch dominos topple over? Okay, that’s pretty much everybody. Now who likes the painstaking business of stacking them? And down go most of the hands. The fact is that there’s a lot of effort involved in placing the dominos for a relatively short payoff. This was clearly something that bugged Grant Davis, so he decided to solve the problem. With LEGO.

He’s posted a video on YouTube, which was spotted by Gizmodo, which showcases a model which not only topples a line of brick-built dominos, but then resets them perfectly. As Davis explains in the video, because the bricks don’t fall in a uniform manner, if they are reset exactly where they fall, it only takes two or three iterations before the process fails. However, thanks to some LEGO train magnets embedded in both the bricks and the floor, the blocks are reset perfectly, every time.   

Video: Grant Davis

In the great scheme of things, there are probably more pressing issues facing humanity, but if you just need something to take your mind off the problems of the day, sitting and watching dominos topple, get reset and topple again is mesmerising. After which you can admire the engineering skill that went into the design in the first place.

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Feel like building a LEGO contraption? You’ll need some LEGO, so why not buy it via the Brick Fanatics affiliate links. Every purchase helps to support the site. Thanks.

Feature image: Grant Davis

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