Redstone mechanics

Redstone mechanics describe the general concepts of redstone power, and how redstone-related blocks interact with one another. This article describes basic ideas such as redstone power, powering blocks, and activating redstone mechanisms.

Redstone is Minecraft's loose analog to electricity. There are a variety of blocks that are able to create a redstone signal or perform unique actions when provided with a redstone signal. Redstone-related blocks can be used in combination to create circuits and complicated mechanisms that can be used to make automatic farms, item sorters, flying machines, and more.

A game tick is the basic unit of time in Minecraft, and is equivalent to 1⁄20 seconds (0.05 seconds)(A tick calculator can be found here. Every game tick, various aspects of the game are updated such as player movement, block updates, mob spawns, etc.