Talk:Redstone Torch/Archive 1

Is redstone copper?
Does anyone else think this mysterious "red powder" is similar to this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper%28I%29_oxide

And in its unmined form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuprite -Rossco 20:32, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no doubt in that, good find.--Quatroking - Garble Garble! 00:19, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * It's copper...yes, that makes sense. Colordutiful 00:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I think so, someone should delete the pages people have been spamming with different names for it and just call it cuprite...--Kingkai8 (what time is it? xD)

Speculative remark
"Useful for raiding parties in multiplayer..." That seems to be implying a lot of unknowns and speculation, IMO --pokemaughan

Efficiency
Since redstone drops at a rate of 4-5 per ore block mined, doesn't this actually mean that redstone torches are at least as efficient as regular torches? Consider: 1 coal block -> 4 torches, 1 redstone block -> 4 to 5 redstone torches. Harbinger0x7c0 18:16, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Just use normal torches, they're brighter and easier to make. By the way, coal is easier to find than redstone. iamninja28

Effected Blocks
This is a problem with most redstone pages, it doesn't say exactly which blocks it will affect. So does it work with the blocks on it's four sides, or the blocks above and below it too?

Power and Current
It is a misnomer to attribute "power" and/or "current" to redstone, especially torches. Torches provide a signal, not power. Power defined as work multiplied by time. Torches themselves don't do work, so they cannot provide power. They merely pass along signals to circuits or devices that work should or should not take place.

Redstone signals are not electrical, so the term current is incorrect as well. They are not even an analogy of electricity. An electrical current has a positive and negative sides to create a flow. This is completely absent in redstone devices. Signals may have a direction, but not an electrical current. There's a difference.

I'm just trying to be precise. Use of the misnomers is so wide-spread, I doubt it would do any good to update the main page. But I'm just throwing it out thre.

Inertia 17:04, 11 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you're being a little overly technical here for a video game. Redstone is a fictional material - it doesn't really conform 100% to real-world thermodynamics. --Warlock 17:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Understood, but I think that saying a torch "powers" a block can lead to a poor understanding of how the material functions in the game. A torch does not power a powered track, for example.  The powered track powers itself.  The torch just provides a signal to the track to indicate that it should be powered. Inertia 01:07, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with Warlock here. I feel like you are trying to be overly precise to the point of error.  For one, how do you know that redstone torches don't provide a voltage, which creates a voltage differential and then creates redstone current?  The fact that we haven't described redstone using this language before doesn't mean that it doesn't apply.  Furthermore, you quite narrowly define power, which stems from your erroneous understanding of "work".  Work is simply any energy transfer from one system to another.  In your words, even if the torch is simply a signal generator, that signal comprises some quantity of energy due to its lower-entropy nature (which must be true because it conveys ordered information).  When it passes this signal on to the redstone wire, you have work, and it's happening over time: power.  It might be difficult to quantify this power, but that doesn't mean the term doesn't apply.  Your position that it is the devices themselves that do the work, but not the redstone, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  Conservation of energy tells us that what goes out, must come in, and since these devices are unable to power themselves without redstone, it is clear that the redstone must be providing energy to the devices.
 * More broadly, look at the purpose of redstone in the game. Notch created redstone to stand in for digital circuits.  In fact (though redstone is full of its own quirks), we can create any and all digital logic gates, both combinational and sequential.  In short, redstone logic was designed to be a perfect analog of real-life digital logic.  For that reason, it is entirely reasonable to attribute language to redstone logic that we would attribute to digital logic.  These terms include power and current.  I've worked in VLSI design, and, all the time, people use phrases like "when this wire gets current, it powers this NMOS transistor" or "when current flows through this PMOS transistor, it is powered."  In redstone land, it's the block/torch pairs that are our transistors. --Nick2253 20:54, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

1.6 burnout rule change?
Since the 1.6.6 patch, I am finding that in singleplayer torches absolutely do not work anymore. If I have a redstone torch powering a wire, and put a redstone torch on a block that wire is powering, the second redstone torch will BURN OUT (not turn off, burn out). If I then remove the original redstone torch so that it should be on, it remains off indefinately, even through a save-reload of the world. I have no mods installed, so this is relevant to the article. Should we add it, and is it just me having this problem? Bobbobbob 06:16, 1 July 2011 (UTC)bobbobbob

Lighting Uses
I've found that using redstone torches are an effective alternative to using regular torches, if you're farming mushrooms. Torches give off a light level of 14 and mushrooms need 13 or less to be able to multiply, so I decided to try using redstone torches as opposed to complete darkness. I've found that it does add some lighting so you can see better, it doesn't interrupt the mushrooms, and, although mobs still spawn, they do spawn much less often so it's easier to deal with them.

If anyone has any other ideas for redstone torch lighting, let me know :P and i hope this was helpful :D

A link to a screenshot of my mushroom farm (sorry im not so great at embedding and whatnot :P)