Gravel

Gravel is a type of block typically found in naturally occurring pits, underwater, on beaches, NPC Villages as pathways, or in The Nether.

Like Sand, Gravel will fall to the lowest y-coordinate below it if there is no solid block underneath it. Therefore it is possible to suffocate with careless use of gravel by being surrounded by it. If the lowest block in a column of Gravel is occupied by a partial block, such as a Torch, the Gravel block will drop and turn into a resource entity when it hits the partial block.

Gravel has a 10% chance of dropping flint once destroyed. Flint is used to create Flint and Steel and Arrows. Gravel blocks that don't drop flint can be picked up, placed, and destroyed again. However, if a gravel block drops flint, it does not additionally drop a gravel block, preventing the creation of an infinite amount of flint. Flint can be obtained from gravel with any tool. Flint can also be obtained by using TNT on gravel.

Usage
Gravel's abundance and gravity-obeying property makes it useful for a variety of tasks, especially considering the other gravity-aware block, Sand, is more useful for creating Glass, TNT, and Sandstone. For exploration, it can be used to quickly build pillars to reach heights that are easy to dismantle after. They can also be used to quickly fill in water or lava lakes by dropping them on the edges or against overhead blocks, so that they fall and occupy the fluids. Filling caves in with gravel is a quick way to prevent mobs from spawning. Mobs can be suffocated with gravel, too.

Gravel can also be used to make airlocks (sand-switches). Gravel is a bit less noticeable underground as a sand switch than sand.

Power-mining
A great way to power-mine massive columns of gravel is to dig under the stone or dirt that it is resting on and place a torch, a redstone torch, a piece of redstone wire, a pressure plate, a section of rails, or a trapdoor. Mine the dirt or stone and the column falls into the placed object, quickly producing dropped resources. This can also be used to mine Sand.

History

 * In Minecraft Classic, gravel and sand "fell" when placed in mid-air by moving directly above the nearest block directly below them, instead of turning into falling block entities and falling.
 * An old glitch in Classic mode allowed players to raise the height of a fluid block by placing Gravel (or Sand) over it. The Gravel would stay suspended in mid-air until it was broken. When broken, a fluid block corresponding to the type below the Gravel would appear where the block was. The suspended fluid block would remain immobile until a block was placed next to it, causing a flood. This bug has since been fixed, but has been reported that it has happened before.

Trivia

 * In the Nether, it is possible to find massive cliffs made of naturally-floating gravel. Just like with Sand, if you destroy, replace, remove, or if a Ghast's fireball hits any of these blocks, all of the adjacent floating blocks will collapse.
 * On gravel beaches, there is usually a two-high block wall upland from the beach.
 * Gravel beaches on map are drawn with the same color as sand beaches.
 * In Beta 1.9 pre5, the texture of Gravel was changed to a softer and slightly more grey pattern.


 * It takes 4 1/2 wooden shovels to convert 24 blocks of gravel into flint. Using this result, it should take 12 wooden shovels to convert one stack of gravel into flint.
 * If gravel falls into lava, it will burn as if it was an item. Likewise, if it falls into a cobweb, it will be slowed down.

Gallery
Unbelieabvle how well-written and informative this was.