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
186 activities
Science 7–10 · page 3 of 4
Yeast respiration: carbon dioxide output against temperature
Living cells release carbon dioxide as they respire sugar, and the rate depends on temperature.
PracticalLow riskAsexual reproduction by cuttings: rooting success as an investigation
A piece of a plant can grow into a complete, genetically identical plant, and the conditions that favour rooting can be tested with a controlled comparison.
PracticalLow riskBell in a vacuum jar: sound needs a medium (teacher demonstration)
A ringing bell becomes almost inaudible as the air is pumped out of the jar around it, because sound needs particles to pass the vibration along.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalHigh riskBeyond the visible: Herschel's infrared experiment and a remote seen on a phone camera
Sunlight carries energy in radiation beyond the red end of the visible spectrum, so a blackened thermometer just past the red edge still warms, and a phone camera shows the invisible infrared flash of a remote control.
Practical, model not builtLow riskBurning magnesium in a crucible: the mass goes up
Mass is conserved in a reaction, so when magnesium combines with oxygen from the air the solid product weighs more than the metal by the mass of oxygen it took in.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskCarbon dioxide into water: acidity, and why seawater resists it
Carbon dioxide dissolves in water and lowers its pH; water carrying dissolved hydrogencarbonate, as seawater does, resists the change, which is how the ocean takes up a large share of emitted carbon dioxide while slowly becoming less alkaline.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskCarbon locked in shells and limestone: carbonate and acid on a balance
Shells, coral and limestone store carbon as calcium carbonate; acid releases it as carbon dioxide, and the mass the flask loses on a balance measures how much carbon the sample held.
PracticalMedium riskCauliflower cloning: tissue culture under aseptic conditions
A tiny piece of plant tissue on a sterile nutrient medium can regenerate a whole plant, because its cells keep the full set of instructions; micropropagation, the technology built on this, is used by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to clone endangered plants and in commercial crop propagation.
PracticalMedium riskConservation of mass in an open flask and a sealed bottle
The total mass of reactants equals the total mass of products; an apparent loss in an open container is the mass of gas that left.
Practical, model not builtLow riskConverging lens: forming a real image on a screen and finding the focal length
A converging lens brings light to a focus, and a more strongly curved lens focuses closer to the lens. An object beyond the focal point forms a real, inverted image on a screen, and as the object is brought closer to the focal point the image moves further from the lens and grows larger.
Practical, model not builtLow riskDoppler effect: a buzzer swung on a cord, recorded on a phone
A sound source moving toward a listener is heard at a higher frequency and one moving away at a lower frequency, because the waves are bunched up ahead of the source and stretched behind it.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskEfficiency of an electric motor lifting a load
Only part of the electrical energy supplied to a motor becomes gravitational potential energy of the load; the rest becomes thermal energy in the windings and bearings, and the ratio is the efficiency.
Practical, model not builtLow riskEnergy audit: power and energy use of household appliances on a plug-in meter
An appliance transforms electrical energy at a rate given by its power, so energy used equals power multiplied by time and can be measured, costed and compared with the rating label.
PracticalMedium riskFlower dissection: male and female parts and the ovules inside
A flower is a reproductive organ whose parts are arranged for pollen transfer and fertilisation, and its structure can be read from the outside in.
PracticalLow riskGenerating electricity: a magnet moving through a coil and a hand-cranked generator
A generator produces electrical energy only while something keeps a magnet and a coil moving past each other, and the mechanical work done turning it is transformed into the electrical energy the circuit uses; power stations produce electricity the same way, with steam, wind or falling water doing the turning.
PracticalLow riskGetting a metal from its oxide: heating copper(II) oxide with charcoal
Carbon is more reactive than copper, so heating copper(II) oxide with charcoal removes the oxygen and copper metal remains, the reaction behind extracting metals from their ores.
PracticalMedium riskHeating metal carbonates: which ones break down, and by how much
A decomposition reaction turns one compound into simpler substances; heating some metal carbonates breaks them down into a metal oxide and carbon dioxide, and how easily they break down follows the reactivity of the metal.
PracticalMedium riskHeating water with an immersion heater: electrical energy in against thermal energy gained
The electrical energy supplied to a heater (V x I x t) sets the thermal energy the water can gain (m x c x change in T), and the shortfall measures energy transferred to the surroundings.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskInvoluntary responses: the knee-jerk reflex and the pupil reflex
Some responses bypass conscious control: the knee-jerk kick follows the tap too fast to feel as a delay because the pathway runs through the spinal cord, and the iris adjusts the pupil to light without any decision being made.
PracticalLow riskLaw of reflection: ray box and plane mirror
Light reflects from a flat mirror so that the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence, both measured from the normal.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMagnesium in acid: predicting the volume of hydrogen before you collect it
A reaction between a metal and an acid makes a salt and hydrogen, and the mass of metal fixes the volume of gas, so a prediction can be tested.
PracticalMedium riskMaking a salt: copper(II) sulfate crystals from copper oxide and sulfuric acid
An insoluble base neutralises an acid to make a soluble salt and water; using an excess of the base and filtering it off gives a pure salt solution from which crystals of the salt can be grown.
PracticalMedium riskMeasuring the speed of sound: echoes from a wall and two phones with acoustic stopwatches
Sound travels at a finite, measurable speed in air, about a third of a kilometre each second, which can be found from the time a clap takes to cover a known distance.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMicroorganisms on hands: sealed agar plates before and after hand hygiene
Hands carry living microorganisms that grow into visible colonies on a nutrient surface, and hand hygiene reduces how many are transferred without sterilising the skin.
PracticalMedium riskNeutralisation: how the pH changes as acid is added to an alkali
Adding an acid to an alkali neutralises it: the pH falls only slowly at first, then very sharply at the point where the alkali has just been used up, and an indicator shows that point as a sudden colour change.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskOhm's law: current against voltage for two fixed resistors
For a metal resistor at steady temperature the current is proportional to the voltage across it, and the constant ratio V / I is its resistance, so a larger resistance lets less current through at the same voltage.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPinhole camera: a model of how the eye forms an inverted image
Rays from each point of an object travel in straight lines through a small opening and cross there, so the image on the screen is inverted and its size depends on the distances. The eye forms its image on the retina in the same way, with the pupil as the opening and the lens gathering enough light to keep the image bright and sharp.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPitch and loudness: measuring frequency and amplitude with a phone spectrum app
The pitch of a sound is set by its frequency and the loudness by its amplitude, and both can be read from a microphone trace.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPollen tube growth on a slide: watching the step before fertilisation
A pollen grain grows a tube toward the ovule when it lands on a suitable surface, and that growth can be watched and measured on a slide within a double lesson.
PracticalLow riskPulse and breathing rate before and after exercise: body systems responding together
When muscles work harder, the nervous system raises heart rate and breathing rate together, so the circulatory and respiratory systems deliver more oxygen and carry away the extra carbon dioxide the muscles produce; when exercise stops, both rates fall back toward resting over several minutes.
PracticalLow riskRadioactive dating with dice: half-life as a rule, not a clock
Each unstable atom has a fixed chance of decaying in a given time, so the number left halves every half-life; counting the parent left in a mineral against the daughter formed gives the rock's age.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRadioactive decay with 100 dice: chance, half-life and the decay curve
Each unstable nucleus decays at random with a fixed chance per unit time, so a large sample loses a constant fraction in each equal interval and the count falls along a curve with a constant half-life.
Practical, model not builtLow riskReaction time by the ruler drop: from catch distance to milliseconds
A response to a stimulus takes measurable time because the signal must travel from receptor to brain to muscle, and that time can be calculated from how far a ruler falls before it is caught.
Practical, model not builtLow riskReading the carbon dioxide record: Kennaook / Cape Grim and Mauna Loa
Two long records of carbon dioxide in clean air show the same accelerating rise, and a yearly wave from plant growth that is large at Mauna Loa in the northern hemisphere and small at Cape Grim in Tasmania.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRed cabbage indicator: reading acids and bases by colour
An indicator is a substance whose colour depends on how acidic or basic a solution is, so it turns the invisible property of pH into something a learner can see and rank.
PracticalLow riskRefraction: tracing a ray through a rectangular glass slab
Light bends toward the normal when it slows on entering glass and away from the normal when it leaves, so a ray that passes through a parallel-sided slab comes out parallel to the ray that went in but shifted sideways.
Practical, model not builtLow riskResistance of a wire: how it changes with length
The resistance of a uniform wire is proportional to its length, because each extra centimetre adds the same opposition to the flow of charge.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRipple tank: reflection at a barrier and refraction into shallow water
Water waves reflect from a barrier at the same angle they arrive and change speed and direction when they cross into shallower water, the same behaviours that light shows at mirrors and glass.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRutherford's gold-foil experiment as a rolling-ball model of the nucleus
Most of an atom is empty space with a tiny, dense, positively charged nucleus, because most alpha particles pass straight through a foil and a very few bounce back.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSeries and parallel circuits: measuring current and voltage with one, two and three lamps
Adding lamps in series shares the supply voltage and lowers the current, while adding lamps in parallel gives each the full voltage and raises the total current drawn; the supply gives each unit of charge a fixed amount of energy, which series lamps share and each parallel branch receives in full.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSlinky waves: transverse and longitudinal pulses, wavelength, frequency and speed
A wave carries energy along a medium while the medium's parts only move about their rest positions, either across the direction of travel (transverse) or along it (longitudinal).
Practical, model not builtLow riskSoil respiration: decomposers returning carbon to the air
Fungi and bacteria in moist soil respire the carbon in dead plant material back into carbon dioxide, so living soil gives carbon to the air while soil heated to kill its microbes gives far less.
PracticalMedium riskSolar cell output against tilt angle and distance from the lamp
A solar cell transforms light energy into electrical energy, so its output depends on how much light energy lands on it each second, which falls as the cell tilts away from the light and as the distance from the source grows.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSound is a vibration: tuning fork in water and dancing sprinkles
Every sound comes from a vibrating source, and the vibration passes through the air to make other objects vibrate.
PracticalLow riskSound through solids, liquids and gases: string telephones, a bench and an underwater tap
Sound travels through any material whose particles can pass on a vibration, and it travels faster and further through solids than through air.
PracticalLow riskThe global carbon budget: where each year's emissions go
Each year's carbon from fossil fuels and land clearing is shared between the atmosphere, the ocean and land plants, so the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide equals emissions minus what the sinks take up.
Calculation and dataLow riskTotal internal reflection: finding the critical angle with a semicircular slab
Light leaving glass for air bends away from the normal, and beyond a certain angle, the critical angle, it cannot leave at all and is entirely reflected inside, which is how optical fibres keep light inside them.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTwo-point discrimination: mapping touch receptor density on the skin
Skin that carries more touch receptors per square centimetre can tell two nearby points apart, so the smallest gap felt as two points measures receptor density.
PracticalLow 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.