Tow Truck to the Rescue

About this drawing

A Minecraft tow truck is something players build for fun, but the game does have a material that makes real machines work: redstone. This red mineral is found deep underground and behaves a lot like electricity.

Mining redstone gives you red dust that can be laid on the ground like wire. Flip a lever, press a button or step on a pressure plate, and the signal travels along the dust to light lamps, open doors or fire pistons that shove blocks around.

Clever players use redstone to build hidden doors, automatic farms, elevators and even working calculators inside the game. Along the way, many kids pick up the basics of circuits and logic without even noticing they are learning.

A tow truck like this could have redstone-powered lights or a moving arm driven by pistons. Figuring out how it might work is part of the magic of Minecraft, a game that turns players into engineers. A first circuit can be tiny: a lever, a short line of dust and a redstone lamp. Flip the lever and the lamp glows, and just like that you have built a complete circuit. From there, each new piece opens up more possibilities.

• minecraft
• tow truck
• redstone
• video games
• circuits