Pressure Plate

Pressure Plates were introduced in the third Seecret Friday update. If connected by wire to an object (or placed adjacent to a block that requires electricity), they will provide power to that object or block when stepped on by either a player or a mob (as well as other items; see below), and will stop when stepped off. Pressure plates are one of the three types of Switches currently in the game.

Stone and wooden plates can be recovered with a pickaxe. Both can also be recovered by destroying the block they are on.

Crafting
There are currently only two types of pressure plates: wood and stone. Wooden pressure plates are made from 3 wooden blocks in a horizontal line, and stone pressure plates are made with Stone (not Cobblestone) in the same fashion; see Crafting.

Triggering
Pressure plates may be triggered in the following ways:


 * A player or a mob standing on a plate.


 * A dropped item (the kind you can pick up by walking onto) on a wooden plate. (Stone plates are not affected.) Sand or Gravel falling onto a pressure plate will convert into a dropped block, but it will not necessarily land on the pressure plate unless there are walls around it.


 * Minecarts:
 * Any type of minecart will trigger a wooden plate.
 * A minecart with a mob or player riding it will trigger a stone plate. (However, Storage Minecarts and Powered Minecarts do not trigger stone plates.)
 * Pressure plates do not act as Minecart Tracks, so the cart will stop on the plate unless it has very high momentum.
 * A minecart on a curved track may trigger a pressure plate adjacent to the track (think about the cart's corners sticking out). However, this is not entirely reliable.


 * An arrow fired into a wooden pressure plate. However, it will only “notice” the arrow if there is a flaming block directly adjacent or directly under it. The fire increases the speed with which the pressure plate updates its state. A plate enabled with this method remains turned on until the arrow is recollected or despawns (which takes exactly one minute as of v1.2.4_01), whether or not there is still fire present.


 * There is a mode to allow pressure plates to be activated only by humans, and not mobs. However, no block in the game currently uses this feature (except some mods).

Druckplatte