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.


 * Any type of minecart will trigger a wooden plate. A minecart with a mob or player riding it will trigger a stone plate. 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.


 * 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