Dominoes and Mathematical Induction

Dominoes are Falling Down

If you queued ten thousand dominoes on a very long table and you want to let them all fall just by letting the first domino fall, then how would you queue it?

The best idea probably is to queue them such that:

  1. When the first domino falls, it will hit the second domino.
  2. Make sure that each domino will hit the domino next to it and that each hit domino will fall.
  3. If conditions (1) and (2) are satisfied, then all the dominoes will fall.

The domino effect

In fact, no matter how many dominoes we put on the table, as long as conditions (1) and (2) are satisfied we are sure that all the dominoes will fall. » Read more