Concept Studio
See the idea. Put it to the test.
956 activities from Kindergarten to Year 12, in 13 subject areas. A practical gives the idea, what you need, the steps, what you should see and a safety card. A teacher-led demonstration gives the idea and its hazards; its method is for tutors on the learning platform.
Review
Reviewed before publication (owner’s confirmation, 24 September 2026). That covers every activity here, and a practical’s page lists the sources its author read.
A safety card on every page
The risk, who supervises and the hazards. The 38 teacher-led demonstrations show their idea and hazards here; their materials, steps and sources, and any result, control or note that states a number or an amount, are for tutors and administrators on the learning platform.
School laboratory, not for home
207 activities are medium or high risk. Each says so on its page: In a school laboratory, with a teacher supervising, under the school's risk assessment. Not for home.
Curriculum references
Each activity lists the NSW syllabus outcomes and Australian Curriculum v9 codes it supports. They are references, not a verified or complete curriculum alignment.
Find an activity
70 activities
Physics 11–12 · page 2 of 2
Diffraction of laser light through slits, a thin wire and a grating (qualitative) (syllabus practical)
Light passing an edge or a narrow opening spreads and forms a pattern of bright and dark bands, which only a wave model explains.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskElectromagnetic induction: magnet and coil, and Lenz's law with a magnet falling through a copper tube
A changing magnetic flux through a coil induces an emf proportional to the rate of change, in a direction that opposes the change producing it.
Practical, model not builtLow riskForce between two parallel current-carrying wires
Each wire sits in the field of the other, so parallel currents attract and antiparallel currents repel with a force per length proportional to the product of the currents over the separation.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskForces in circular motion: conical pendulum and a car on a banked bend
On a banked surface or a slanted string, the horizontal component of the normal force or tension supplies the centripetal force, which fixes the speed for a given angle.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHalf-life with dice and a decay simulation
Each unstable nucleus has a fixed chance of decaying per unit time, so a large sample loses a constant fraction in each half-life however many remain.
Practical, model not builtLow riskKepler's third law from planetary data
For every body orbiting the same central mass, the cube of the orbital radius divided by the square of the period is the same constant, fixed by the central mass.
Calculation and dataLow riskMalus's law with two polarising filters and a phone light meter (syllabus practical)
Light is a transverse wave whose electric field can be filtered to one direction, and the transmitted intensity through a second filter falls with the square of the cosine of the angle between them.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMass defect and binding energy: the deuteron from measured masses
A nucleus weighs less than its separated nucleons, and the missing mass times c squared is the energy that holds it together and the energy released when it forms.
Calculation and dataLow riskMeasuring a laser's wavelength with a double slit and a diffraction grating (quantitative) (syllabus practical)
Bright fringes appear where the path difference from two sources is a whole number of wavelengths, so the fringe geometry gives the wavelength.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskModelling a fission chain reaction with dominoes, mousetraps and a simulation
Each fission releases neutrons that can trigger further fissions, so the number of events per generation multiplies unless enough neutrons are absorbed or escape.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskModelling Millikan's oil drop experiment: quantised charge from blind mass measurements
Charges on oil drops come in whole multiples of one unit, found by balancing a drop's weight against an electric force and looking for the common factor in the results.
Practical, model not builtLow riskModelling the expanding Universe with elastic and markers, and Hubble's law from galaxy data
If space expands uniformly, every galaxy recedes from every other at a speed proportional to its distance, and 1 over the constant of proportionality, the Hubble time, is how long the expansion would have taken at today's rate.
Practical, model not builtLow riskProjectile motion: primary data from a ball leaving a bench and a spring launcher (syllabus practical)
A projectile's horizontal velocity stays constant while its vertical velocity changes at g, so range and time of flight follow from the launch conditions.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRolling with Rutherford: finding a hidden target's size from marble scattering
Firing probes at an unseen target and counting deflections reveals the target's size, the reasoning that turned alpha-particle scattering into the nuclear atom.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSpectra from discharge tubes, an incandescent filament and reflected sunlight with a hand spectroscope (syllabus practical)
Hot dense sources give a continuous spectrum, low-pressure gases energised by an electric discharge give bright lines unique to each element, and the Sun shows dark absorption lines on a continuous background.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskSpeed of light from the standing waves in a microwave oven (syllabus practical)
Microwaves are light of long wavelength; inside an oven they form standing waves whose hot spots sit half a wavelength apart, so the spacing and the oven's stated frequency give the speed of light.
Practical, model not builtLow riskThe Balmer series: measuring hydrogen's visible lines with a diffraction grating
Hydrogen emits only certain wavelengths because its electron drops between fixed energy levels, and the Rydberg formula predicts every visible line.
Teacher-led demonstrationPractical, model not builtMedium riskThe Hertzsprung-Russell diagram from real star data, with spectral classes
Plotting luminosity against surface temperature sorts stars into a main sequence, giants and white dwarfs, and the position of a star reveals its size and its stage of life.
Calculation and dataLow riskThe motor effect measured on a digital balance: force on a current-carrying wire
A conductor carrying current across a magnetic field feels a force proportional to the current, the field and the length in the field, at right angles to both.
Practical, model not builtLow riskThe photoelectric effect: stopping-voltage simulation and a bench estimate of Planck's constant from LEDs
Light delivers energy in packets proportional to frequency, so electrons leave a metal only above a threshold frequency and their maximum energy grows with frequency, not intensity.
Teacher-led demonstrationPractical, model not builtMedium riskTorque and rotational equilibrium with a metre rule on a pivot
A force turns an object about a pivot with a torque equal to force times perpendicular distance, and a body stays balanced when the torques cancel.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTransformer turns ratio and losses with a demountable transformer
An alternating current in one coil induces an emf in a second coil sharing the same core, in the ratio of their turns, while flux leakage and heating make a real transformer fall short of the ideal.
Practical, model not builtMedium risk
For tutors and administrators
The materials and steps of every teacher-led demonstration are on the learning platform, with the safety card first. Sign in with a tutor or administrator account to read them.