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
956 activities
Every subject and year · page 11 of 20
Cloning cauliflower by tissue culture on sterile medium
A few plant cells on a sterile nutrient medium can regrow a whole plant because plant cells keep the capacity to form any tissue, which is the basis of micropropagation.
PracticalMedium riskCoin-toss crosses: predicted ratios, sampling scatter and the chi-squared test
A Punnett square predicts a ratio, but real offspring counts scatter around it, and a chi-squared test decides whether the scatter is more than chance.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCow's eye dissection: the structures that focus light and the site of visual disorders
The cornea and lens together bend light onto the retina, so their shape and clarity decide whether an image is sharp, which is why spectacles, contact lenses and laser surgery act on the path of light through the front of the eye.
PracticalMedium riskEvaporative cooling and the limit of sweating: wet-bulb and dry-bulb temperatures
Sweat cools the body only by evaporating, and a wet thermometer bulb shows the lowest temperature evaporation can reach, which rises toward air temperature as humidity rises and so sets a limit to thermoregulation.
Practical, model not builtLow riskExtracting DNA from split peas or onion
Breaking cells with detergent, stripping proteins with a protease and adding cold ethanol pulls the long DNA molecules out of solution as a visible mass.
PracticalMedium riskFlower dissection and hand pollination of rapid-cycling brassicas
A flower's parts are organised for pollen transfer and fertilisation, and moving pollen by hand between chosen parents is the basis of artificial pollination in plant breeding.
PracticalLow riskFrequency of PTC tasting in a class and the allele frequencies it implies
PTC tasting is often treated as a trait with dominant inheritance, and under that simplification the fraction of non-tasters gives the recessive allele frequency by Hardy-Weinberg; the University of Utah page cautions that tasters vary greatly in sensitivity and that the PTC gene has about 85 percent of the influence, so the figure is an estimate under a simple model.
Practical, model not builtLow riskGel electrophoresis of food dyes and a size calculator for DNA fragments
Charged molecules travel through a gel at speeds set by size and charge, and a ladder of known sizes calibrates the gel. Food dyes stand in for DNA fragments: the gel shows the separation step that DNA profiling depends on, without running any DNA and without reading an inheritance pattern.
Teacher-led demonstrationPractical, model not builtMedium riskHand hygiene: fluorescent lotion under ultraviolet light and fingertip plates
Washing removes microbes only from the surfaces it reaches, so a fluorescent stand-in for germs shows which parts of the hands a technique misses and fingertip plates show how far each treatment reduces the microbes that grow.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskHeart rate, breathing rate and oxygen saturation before, during and after exercise
Exercise disturbs the body's internal environment and heart and breathing rates rise to correct it, then fall back toward resting values, while blood oxygen saturation stays nearly constant: a negative feedback response the learner can measure on themselves.
PracticalLow riskKoch's postulates with blue mould rot of apples (Penicillium expansum)
A microbe is shown to cause a disease only when it is isolated from the diseased host, grown in pure culture, used to reproduce the same disease in a healthy host, and isolated again.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskLamb kidney dissection: cortex, medulla, pelvis and ureter
The kidney's outer cortex, inner medulla and central pelvis are the visible regions of the kidney's filtering units (nephrons), and seeing them explains what dialysis must replace when kidney function is lost.
PracticalMedium riskMicrobial testing of water and food samples on nutrient agar
Microorganisms invisible in a water or food sample grow into countable colonies on a nutrient medium, so a plate count measures how contaminated a sample is.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskMitosis in an onion root tip squash and the mitotic index
Growing root tips are full of dividing cells, and a stained squash shows every stage of mitosis at once so the fraction of cells dividing can be counted.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskModelling DNA replication and the Meselson-Stahl test of three models
Each strand of a DNA molecule is a template for a new complementary strand, so every daughter molecule keeps one old strand, and the pattern of heavy and light DNA across generations distinguishes this semi-conservative model from its rivals.
Practical, model not builtLow riskModelling haemodialysis with Visking tubing and why fresh fluid is needed
In dialysis, small solutes diffuse from blood across a partially permeable membrane into dialysis fluid until concentrations equalise, large molecules stay behind, and only fresh fluid keeps removing waste.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskModelling meiosis, crossing over and fertilisation with Reebop chromosomes
Independent assortment, crossing over and random fertilisation together give each offspring a genotype that no sibling need share, and a physical model makes each source of variation countable.
Practical, model not builtLow riskNear point, amplitude of accommodation and why reading glasses become necessary
The lens changes shape to focus near objects, and the closest point a person can focus (the near point) measures how much it can change, an amount that falls with age until reading needs added lens power.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPasteur's swan-neck flask experiment with sterile nutrient broth
Sterile broth stays clear when air can reach it but dust cannot, and clouds only once airborne microbes get in, so microbes come from other microbes rather than arising from the broth itself.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskResponse of Australian native plants to Phytophthora dieback: a no-contact field survey
A soil-borne water mould kills the roots of susceptible native plants, and the pattern of dieback across a site, mapped without touching or moving soil, shows how the pathogen spreads and which plants respond by dying back.
PracticalMedium riskTesting simulated urine for glucose and protein: evidence of diabetes and kidney damage
When blood glucose rises above what the kidney tubules can reabsorb, glucose appears in urine, and protein in urine signals damaged filters, so simple tests on urine reveal failures of homeostasis.
PracticalMedium riskTracing the spread of an infection: the fluid-exchange epidemic with an indicator test
A hidden infection passed on by direct contact spreads through a group faster with every round of contact, and a record of who met whom lets the source be traced back, though never beyond the first pair.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskUltraviolet protection measured with UV-sensitive beads under sunscreens and fabric
Ultraviolet radiation, the main environmental cause of skin cancer, can be detected by beads that change colour, and the reduction in colour change under a sunscreen or fabric shows how much ultraviolet it screens out.
Practical, model not builtLow riskVitamin C in fruit juices by DCPIP titration: a nutritional disease investigation
Vitamin C decolourises the blue dye DCPIP in a fixed ratio, so the volume of dye a juice can decolourise measures its vitamin C, the nutrient whose lack causes scurvy.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWater treatments compared by plate counts: boiling, chlorination and filtering
Treatments that kill or remove microbes reduce the number of colonies a water sample can grow, and plate counts before and after measure how well each treatment works.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskAlbedo: how surface colour changes the energy absorbed and the temperature reached
A surface reflects a fraction of the sunlight it receives (its albedo) and absorbs the rest, so ice, forest, ocean and city roofs warm at different rates under the same Sun.
PracticalLow riskAngle of sunlight and energy received: the cosine law with a lamp and a light meter
The energy a surface receives per square metre falls with the cosine of the angle from the perpendicular, which is why latitude, season and axial tilt control climate.
Practical, model not builtLow riskChemical weathering of limestone: reaction of calcium carbonate with dilute acid
Carbonate rock dissolves in acid at a rate set by surface area, concentration and temperature, the same chemistry that forms caves and soil from limestone.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskClassifying rocks as igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic with a dichotomous key
Texture (crystal or grain size, layering, foliation) and mineral content record how a rock formed, which is what a rock classification key reads.
PracticalLow riskConvection currents in a beaker (syllabus practical)
Heated fluid expands, becomes less dense and rises while cooler fluid sinks, the circulation that carries heat through the mantle, oceans and atmosphere.
PracticalMedium riskCrystal size and cooling rate with salol on warm and cold slides
Slow cooling grows large crystals and fast cooling grows small ones, which is why intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks of the same composition look different.
PracticalLow riskDensity of crust, mantle and core materials and what it tells us about the interior
Surface rocks are far less dense than the whole Earth, so the interior must hold much denser material, which the layered model reproduces.
Practical, model not builtLow riskDensity-driven ocean currents: cold, salty water sinking under warm, fresh water
Temperature and salinity set seawater density, and density differences drive the deep circulation that moves heat between the poles and the tropics.
PracticalLow riskEffect of salinity on seed germination and seedling growth
Dissolved salt lowers the water potential of soil water, so germination and growth fall as salinity rises, the mechanism behind lost production on salinised land.
PracticalLow riskIdentifying minerals by hardness, streak, lustre, cleavage, acid test and specific gravity
A mineral is identified from a fixed set of physical properties that follow from its composition and crystal structure, applied through a dichotomous key.
PracticalLow riskModelling divergent, convergent and transform boundaries and the features they build
Each boundary type produces a characteristic set of features, rift and ridge, trench and fold mountains, offset faults, which simple sand and card models reproduce under the same motions.
PracticalLow riskModelling radioactive decay with dice and calculating a radiometric age
Decay is random for each atom yet exactly predictable for a large number, so the parent-to-daughter ratio in a mineral is a clock.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPanning for gold: separating a dense mineral from sand by density
Alluvial gold is recovered because it is far denser than quartz sand (gold up to about twenty times the density of water, quartz sand 2.7, Earthlearningidea), so washing sorts the grains, the principle behind panning, jigs and sluices.
PracticalLow riskPorosity and permeability of sand, gravel and clay columns, with Darcy’s law
Pore space stores groundwater and connected pores let it flow, so the same measured columns show why an aquifer holds water and a clay layer confines it.
Practical, model not builtLow riskProperties of water that shape the Earth: heat capacity, density of ice, surface tension and solvent action
Water’s high heat capacity, expansion on freezing, surface tension and solvent power each follow from hydrogen bonding and each governs a large-scale Earth process.
PracticalMedium riskSea-floor spreading and magnetic stripes: a magnetised-pin model and the spreading-rate calculator
New crust forms at a ridge and records the magnetic field of its day, so on each side of the ridge a stripe’s width equals the half spreading rate multiplied by the length of that polarity interval.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSoil components by the jar settling test, the ribbon test and Stokes’ law
A soil is a mixture of sand, silt, clay and organic matter whose grain sizes settle at rates set by Stokes’ law, so a shaken jar sorts the soil for you.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSoil erosion prevention: bare, mulched and planted trays under a measured rainfall (syllabus practical)
Cover protects soil from raindrop impact and slows runoff, so the same rain on a covered tray moves far less sediment than on bare ground.
PracticalLow riskSoil pH and organic content by loss on ignition
Soil forms from rock, air, water and living things together; its pH and organic fraction are measurable records of the biotic and chemical part of that formation.
PracticalMedium riskStick-slip on a brick: elastic energy storage and sudden release as an earthquake model
Rock across a locked fault stores elastic potential energy until friction fails, and the sudden slip releases that energy as seismic waves.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSurveying an introduced species with quadrats and a transect (fieldwork)
The abundance and spread of a weed such as lantana can be measured, not guessed, by sampling along a line with quadrats and recording cover and frequency.
PracticalMedium riskThe continental jigsaw: fitting the continents at the edge of the shelf
The continents fit at the continental shelf edge rather than the coastline, and matching rocks and fossils across the join are evidence that they were once one.
PracticalLow riskThe S-wave shadow zone: modelling why the outer core must be liquid
S waves cannot pass through liquid, so stations more than about 103 degrees from an earthquake record no direct S waves, which fixes the size and state of the outer core.
Practical, model not builtLow 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.