Gravel

Gravel is a type of block typically found in naturally occurring pits, underwater, on beaches, NPC Villages, or in The Nether. It can also be found at the Bedrock layer. Gravel beaches are scarce and are known as black-sand beaches, and gravel in The Nether is a bit more rare than soul sand.

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, like a Torch, the Gravel block will disintegrate into a gravel resource instead.

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.

Uses
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 also a quick way to prevent mobs from spawning. Mobs can also be suffocated with gravel.

Gravel can also be used to make sand-switches and airlocks. Gravel would be less suspicious underground to be used like 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. Under that dirt or stone, place a torch, a redstone torch, a piece of redstone wire, a Pressure Plate, a piece of minecart track, or a trap-door. Mine the dirt or stone and the column falls into the placed object, quickly producing dropped resources. Note that this method will not generate flint. This can also be used to mine Sand.

Trivia

 * In classic, if the player is next to a set of blocks and places 2 gravel blocks above them, using the side of those blocks, they will end up inside of those blocks, and notice the internal texture of gravel is identical, but darker than normal gravel. Like most blocks, they are also hollow. The same bug happened in sand.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * In gravel beaches, usually there is a two-high block wall upland the beach.
 * Gravel beaches on map are drawn with the same color as sand beaches.

Gallery
Kies Grind Żwir Гравий Gravier