Domino masters get everything in place for the Tech Topple in San Jose
I stopped by the Tech Interactive this week to chat with Alex Huang, who is overseeing the 10th annual Tech Topple, probably the most eye-popping event the downtown San Jose science and learning center hosts each year.
Huang — a 25-year-old San Jose native and civil engineer — is leading a team of 15 people from around the country who have been creating the largest live domino and chain-reaction machine build you’ll find anywhere in the state. That’s 50,000 dominoes being placed by hand in intricate patterns so that they all fall in step when the big topple happens Saturday afternoon.
The build’s theme this year is “Think Outside the Box,” as a nod to escape rooms. There are five different sections based on popular puzzles like scavenger hunts, crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles and riddles. When each section is toppled, it’ll reveal a number that is part of a combination to open a big lock puzzle prop and set off the grand finale.
“We’re estimating it’ll take 10 to 12 minutes,” Huang said. Last year’s build — an amusement park — had 40,000 dominoes and took just under 8 minutes.
Huang started building dominoes when he was 11, initially getting involved by watching videos of other builds online.
“For the first few years, it was just a YouTube community and people building at home and then they started organizing live events like this,” Huang said. “It became this thing where you were just building by yourself at home and now you’re building live exhibits with other people.”
After participating in one such group build, Huang — then just a teenager — decided to start one in San Jose and recruited some of his fellow builders from that event to take part in his new one. The team and the event are known as Reactica in the domino-building community, and they hold two Guinness World Records for the most dominoes toppled in a circle (76,017) in 2016 and the tallest domino structure (33 feet, 2.74 inches) in 2024.
This year’s team is divided between eight people working on chain-reaction machines and seven who are doing the domino structures.
While planning began months ago, there’s still on the spot creativity that goes into the project during the build week.
“There are a lot of things that we don’t really know how they’ll work until we’re seeing them in person,” Huang said. “You can’t plan everything ahead. We have to be here and test while we’re building.”
They also have to take precautions to make sure all their work doesn’t topple prematurely. The tallest structures are built first and are usually placed in the back of the build so they won’t take much out if they fall down. And every few thousand dominoes, the builders put in “safety gaps” by taking out a few from the line so all is not lost if they accidentally fall during construction.
Filling those gaps will be the last thing the team does Saturday morning before the big event at 1 p.m. in the New Venture Hall on the ground floor. After everything is done, the team will hold a question-and-answer session with the public.
While this might seem crazy to spend your week building something that’ll be gone in less than 15 minutes, Huang says his domino work is probably what steered him toward studying engineering at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo. Members of the team also have been hired to build domino structures for commercials or live events.
But their biggest public claim to fame may have been in 2022, when some of them were featured on Fox’s 2022 reality show, “Domino Masters.” Huang was pulled out of the casting process to serve on the production team, helping host Eric Stonestreet and celebrity judges with lingo from the domino community and checking the builds.
“The peak of a lot of our careers was getting flown down to L.A. and getting to be part of this TV show and see our faces on TV,” Huang said.
The Tech Topple is free to watch with Tech Interactive admission on Saturday, but space is limited to watch it live. It’ll also be shown live on screens in other parts of the museum and will be posted on YouTube.