Hopper

The Hopper is a block planned to be added in the Redstone Update. It will connect to the face of another block. If an item falls on top of it, it will store it in its own internal inventory of five item slots. However, if the block the hopper is attached to is a container with inventory slots (like a chest), the hopper will transfer items from its inventory to the inventory of the attached block at rate of about 4 items per second.

The hopper also recognizes minecarts with chests and minecarts with furnaces, due to the fact that it is still WIP and bugged. For example, if a furnace minecart is directly under it and the hopper has items in its inventory, it will try to put them into the furnace minecart, but it actually deletes them.

The hopper can be used for substitute pipes. If you were to place a chest or other block with an inventory above a hopper, then connect the hopper to another block(even another hopper), it will transfer the items between the two blocks. However, this method is expensive and items cannot travel upwards.

Trivia

 * A hopper is a type of chute used in industrial processes that incorporates a limited storage capacity.

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