Power Play - Using Redstone in 'Minecraft' Quiz

Answer: No

One of the limits to redstone is that the power will fizzle out after it travels 15 blocks from the power source. In order to extend the signal, you need to insert a mechanism like a redstone repeater, which will restrengthen the power in the wire and allow it to continue providing the signal for another 15 blocks.

Answer: 0.1 seconds

By default, a freshly placed redstone repeater will delay the signal travelling through it by 0.1 seconds. This can be toggled three further times to delay the signal by 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 seconds respectively. Placing a succession of repeaters will continue to delay the signal according to what they are set to. For example, three consecutive repeaters all at maximum delay will delay the output signal by 1.2 seconds. This sort of thing can be useful if there's parts of your circuit that need triggering or activating in a certain order or after a certain amount of time.

In addition to delay, redstone repeaters can control the direction of a current. There is an arrow/triangle on the repeater which indicates the direction that the current will flow - from the rear to the front. Two miniature redstone torches also form part of the repeater. The static torch will always be at the front, while the other torch will be toggle-able and indicate the repeater's delay.

Answer: Providing power to the block it is on

As redstone torches are a source of power themselves, leading a powered wire to it will have no effect, as it will send its own power back down the wire. You need to power the block it sits on or is attached to. A wire leading back to another power source will do the trick, as will sticking a lever or button on the same block, though the button will only toggle it for the briefest of moments.

Redstone torches cannot be placed on the side of a glass block, only on the top of it, and even then, it will still behave as normal. Redstone dust can't be placed on glass.

Answer: NOT gate

The NOT logic gate is probably the simplest of them all. As you would expect, it changes the signal from one state to another. One of the simplest NOT gate designs consists of a single redstone torch placed on the side of a block, with a redstone signal leading into the block and an output signal leading away from the torch. As the input signal is toggled, the opposite signal will be output from the gate.

To simplify this, you can create a truth table, which describes each possible input and its resulting output. For a NOT gate, the truth table is fairly straightforward. If the input is 0 (off), the output is 1 (on); if the input is 1 (on), the output is 0 (off).

More complex circuits will require logic gates with multiple inputs, such as a NAND gate (an inverted AND gate), a XOR gate (produces an output of 1 if both inputs are different states and produces an output of 0 if the inputs are the same), and a XNOR gate (an inverted XOR gate).

Answer: Switching a block of glowstone on and off

Interestingly, rather than being affected by redstone, a block of glowstone can have an effect on redstone. It can act as a rudimentary inverter, though without the same effectiveness as a NOT logic gate. An incoming powered wire, when placed on top of a block of glowstone, will be unpowered when it leaves the block of glowstone.

The same cannot be said of the reverse situation: an incoming unpowered signal will not be changed to a powered signal if it runs over a block of glowstone.

Answer: The output signal from a weighted pressure plate is affected by the number of entities on it

Weighted pressure plates also come in two flavours: light and heavy. Light pressure plates are made of gold while heavy pressure plates are crafted using iron. Each are affected in different ways by the number of entities on it (dropped inventory items, players, mobs, etc.).

Light pressure plates will increase the output signal strength by one block for every entity that gets placed on it. So, if you drop two items from your inventory onto a light pressure plate, the output signal will stretch for two blocks.

Heavy pressure plates, on the other hand, will increase their output signal strength by one block for every 10 entities placed on it. Dropping, say, between one and ten different inventory items on a heavy pressure plate will output a one block-strong signal, while eleven to twenty items will increase that output signal to two blocks, and so on.

Keep in mind, multiple dropped items of the same type will merge together fairly quickly if they're in close proximity of one another, effectively acting as only one item on the pressure plate.

Answer: False

A block of redstone can indeed be crafted, and will act in a similar way to a redstone torch. The one major difference, though, is this is a constant source of power. You can't turn off a block of redstone. It will always be "on". This doesn't mean it's entirely useless. Quite the contrary, actually. Because it exists as a block as opposed to an item, pistons can manipulate it and make it into a moveable power source.

However, a block of redstone won't be able to provide power directly to block; you'll need to use redstone dust for this.

Answer: Dropper

Droppers and dispensers are very similar mechanisms, the only difference being that the dropper will simply drop out an item, regardless of what it is. Dispensers will fire out items if they are normally used in such a way, like arrows from a bow or chucking a potion on the ground to activate it.

Droppers differ from dispensers again, because they can be used to put items directly into blocks with an internal storage, like chests and other droppers. They are so versatile that you can even set up a succession of droppers and have them transport items from one to the next in whichever direction you like.

Hoppers are funnel-like blocks which can feed items into containers from above or take items out of containers from below. These, however, don't require the use of redstone to work, but you can use it to control when a hopper does its thing.

Answer: Refreshing a single input signal back up to maximum strength, like a redstone repeater

Redstone comparators can have inputs from the rear and the side. In its default state, a comparator will compare the two signals coming in. If the rear input is stronger than the side input, the comparator will output a signal equal to the rear input's strength. If the side input is stronger than the rear input, no signal will be output.

The comparator can also be toggled from its default state to compare the two input signals and producing an output signal equal to the difference between the two inputs. However, the rear input must always be the stronger of the two, otherwise there will be no output.

Placing a comparator next to a container (with the container acting as the rear input) will produce a signal that changes based on how full that container is. A full container will emit a full strength signal, and as the container is emptied, the output signal strength will proportionally decrease.

Unlike a repeater, a comparator with a single input from the rear will only carry forward the signal strength of its input. For instance, if the input is 5 blocks away from a power source (and therefore at signal strenth 11), the output from a comparator will be at strength 11. Extending the output signal will continue to decrease in strength as normal.

Answer: Toggling the state of a lever

The lever itself can't be toggled by wiring it up to a circuit. It has to be toggled by manually interacting with it to change its output. Basically, a lever can be used to provide a persistent but toggle-able signal.

Minecarts can be sent along a track, provided the static minecart is sitting on a powered rail and adjacent to a block. This adjacent block determines the direction the minecart will travel; a powered rail in between two normal rails will have no effect on a static minecart (unless it's on a slope, in which case the direction of travel will be determined by gravity). A redstone signal can be used to activate a powered rail from afar, or a button or similar mechanism placed on adjacent blocks to the rail will also work.

A daylight sensor emits varying signal strengths based on the surrounding light level. In turn, this will determine how far along a wire the signal will travel. This can then be used to open and close a set of doors, for example, if the light drops below a certain level, such as in the evening.

Note blocks can be activated by redstone or manually interacting with them. A simple circuit utilising redstone repeaters to delay the signal can be wired up to various note blocks to create a rudimentary music box, which can, of course, be activated on demand. For example, you might wire up a short tune to a button to act as a sort of doorbell.