Material reducer in Minecraft: Education Edition - How to obtain, uses, and more

At the end of the day, everything is comprised of chemicals, and this is made abundantly clear in Minecraft: Education Edition.

One of the core pieces of chemicals in this particular version of Minecraft is naturally-occuring elements, which can either be constructed or formed from breaking down ordinary Minecraft blocks.

To break these blocks down into elements, players and students can use a block known as the material reducer. It packs in blocks and forms elements from them without toying around with an element's molecular structure in the element constructor.

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Minecraft: Obtaining and using the material reducer

The UI for the material reducer. Notice the elements that outpour from the lone grass block (Image via Mojang).

Obtaining the material reducer can be a little tricky in Minecraft: Education Edition (it is accessible in Bedrock Edition as well if players enable Education Edition's features in their settings), as it isn't obtainable in Survival Mode without commands.

However, opening Creative Mode makes it possible to pull the block into one's inventory from the items category. Most educators and players opt to obtain the block this way, as it's far easier than bothering with the command console.

After placing the material reducer in Minecraft, players and students can interact with it through a right-click or the input of the use button. Doing so will open the user interface for the block, which shows an input slot at the top of the window, nine output slots for elements, and the player's inventory placed at the bottom.

By placing a block in the topmost slot of the material reducer, it will break down into its component parts, which can then be retrieved.

Minecraft players and students can even use otherworldly blocks like soul sand and netherrack to create unknown elements that aren't placed on the periodic table.

Since the Nether is another dimension entirely, who really knows what it is made of? It's something of an enigma, as the ??? element created from these Nether blocks cannot have their molecular structure examined in the element constructor. Regardless, breaking down any block into elements will also provide Minecraft players with 100 atoms.

When it comes to obtaining different elements with the material reducer, variety is key. Try all sorts of different blocks found in the Overworld, the Nether and End dimensions. Assess what blocks form into certain elements in order to rack up the stockpile of vital ones like Carbon, Hydrogen, and more.