Minecart

Minecarts are vehicle entities.

Obtaining
Minecarts can be retrieved by it for some time. Attacking the minecart with a sword or a bow will instantly destroy it.

Other minecarts
Minecarts with chests, minecarts with hoppers, minecarts with furnaces, and minecarts with TNT, will drop 1 minecart when destroyed, along with the other item. Minecarts with spawners will only drop a minecart when broken.

Usage
A minecart can be placed in the same manner as most blocks, but can only be placed on top of a rail. Once placed, it may be derailed by pushing it off the end of the track. After this, it can be railed again by placing a rail directly below it, or pushing it onto a track.

Transportation


Minecarts can be ridden by on them. Once inside, an external impulse may be needed to make the minecart start moving. The player can slowly move the minecart forwards while riding it, by pressing. If a mob walks in front of an empty minecart, it will be pulled into the cart.

Players can exit the minecart by pressing, however if there is only one block of headroom above the cart the player will take of suffocation damage as his head will be temporarily in the ceiling. When the minecart is exited, it searches for an adjacent or diagonal 2×2×3 area to put the player 1.5 blocks away from the cart. If none is available, the player is deposited directly above the minecart. Consequently, the player falls inside the minecart.

After rolling off of the end of a track, a minecart can be pushed around on open blocks. If a minecart is pushed onto or falls onto tracks, it will "snap" to those tracks. When riding a minecart, if the minecart lands on a rail, the player will not take any fall damage.

Speed
Minecarts have a predefined speed limit of 8 m/s per axis of travel. (1 block = 1 meter; 8 m/s = 28.8 km/hr.) A minecart traveling diagonally can therefore travel up to 11.314 m/s (i.e. the square root of the quantity 82 + 82) When a minecart comes to a turn it moves diagonally across that turn.

Boosting
Powered rails powered by redstone will give minecarts a boost of speed.

Loss of speed
One unit of kinetic energy could be defined as the energy gained by a cart going down a one block slope, and lost by a cart when it goes up a one block slope. If a 45 degree downward slope is connected directly into an upward slope, an initial height of 60 blocks will result in a final height of 40 blocks, a loss of 20 units of potential energy. But if 20 sections of flat track are inserted between the slopes, the final height will be 35. This implies that one unit of energy is lost for every 4 sections of horizontal track traveled with an initial stored energy of between 60 and 40. At much lower speeds, much less energy is lost, implying that the energy lost is a percentage of the cart's current energy. The above gives about 0.5% energy loss per section of track. One implication of this is that more energy lost when the cart has more energy, so a gradual slope should allow you to travel much farther distances than a steep slope followed by a long flat section. (This is different from real-life physics, where friction does not increase with velocity. However, it may be an attempt to mirror air resistance, which does increase with velocity.)

Anything in the way of the minecart will take it to a dead stop. Once a minecart has left the track, it will rapidly decelerate within one or two blocks. It is possible to have a sufficiently boosted minecart "skip" over one square without a track, then rejoin the track at reduced energy later. When a mob touches a minecart they affect it in the same way a player would, i.e. mobs that move up against a still cart will set it in motion.

Merged minecarts
Merged minecarts are two or more minecarts merged. Their special feature is their odd way of losing speed. When coming off a track, merged minecarts initially lose their speed to around walking speed. But after first contact, they won't lose their speed anymore.

This way they can be used to cross certain distances when the player's only goal is to not actively walk towards the player's goal / target. Or when the player doesn't have enough resources to cover the complete distance, this measure can be considered. Note: for this concept to work, at least 3 minecarts will have to be merged. Doing this can detach the minecarts by pushing one off of the rails, or the one the player is riding might get stuck on a tight turn. Speed may decrease when merged.

Unoccupied carts, incline and a boost
This table shows the distance travelled by an unoccupied minecart on an incline, with a boost (or no boost). The most efficient way is to use only 1 boost at the bottom of the incline on the flat surface. Using 2 will increase by about 20% or 1.5m. All distance trends based on the height seem to be logarithmic. The carts started from rest, on an incline (at Height).

Collision
Minecarts seem to have about the same size as a block (1x1). Because of this, a ladder, door or trapdoor will prevent it from falling down a 1x1 hole.

Carts on rails will also ignore collision in certain situations. A cart traveling downhill or on a curve with a block placed in front of it will go through the block. If it is going fast enough, it can skip through one block and reattach to track on the other side, at significantly reduced speed.

A player riding in a minecart will not collide with or suffocate in any transparent blocks.

Video
Note: This video shows only 3 varieties of minecarts, as it is outdated. There are currently 6 varieties.

Trivia

 * Endermen cannot teleport out of minecarts.
 * Minecarts appear to float above the track, as their model has no wheels.
 * You can bump a medium slime in a minecart, and it can't attack you. However, a large slime can.
 * Tamed wolves will follow you when you are in a minecart.
 * If you view your inventory while riding in a minecart you will appear sitting down in mid-air.MinecartStack.png
 * Minecarts can be set on fire, but the mob or player inside the minecart will not catch fire from a minecart.
 * You are able to teleport to another minecart whilst sitting in a minecart by right clicking a minecart in your range.
 * Some mobs are able to nudge minecarts while in them, like players.