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.
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956 activities
Every subject and year · page 15 of 20
Cut and rearrange: parallelograms and triangles from rectangles
A parallelogram cut along its height and rearranged becomes a rectangle of the same area, and a rectangle cut along a diagonal gives two triangles of half its area.
Practical, model not builtLow riskEstimate the docket, then check it: rounding to judge whether a total is reasonable
Rounding every price before adding gives a total close enough to judge whether the printed total is reasonable, and the rounding rule chosen decides whether the line-by-line errors cancel or pile up.
Practical, model not builtLow riskFraction strips on a 24 cm whole: adding and subtracting
Fractions with the same or related denominators are added and subtracted by measuring them as lengths of the same whole, which gives the same result as renaming them with a common denominator.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHand spans: a dot plot, the mode and the range
Measurements collected from a group vary, and a dot plot shows the shape of that variation together with the most common value and the spread from smallest to largest.
Practical, model not builtLow riskLength times width: where the area formula comes from
A rectangle on a centimetre grid holds rows of equal squares, so its area is the number of squares in a row times the number of rows, which is length times width.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMake a cubic metre
A cubic metre is a cube one metre on each edge, holds a million cubic centimetres or a thousand litres, and rooms are measured in it.
PracticalLow riskMatchstick patterns: finding the rule
A growing pattern built from matchsticks has a rule that links the position of a term to the number of sticks, and the rule predicts terms that are too big to build.
Practical, model not builtLow riskOne sheet of paper: dividing measurements by 10, 100 and 500
A quantity too small to measure directly is found by measuring many copies and dividing, and dividing by 10 or 100 moves every digit one or two places to the right, while dividing by 500 is that two-place shift followed by a division by 5.
PracticalLow riskOrdering fractions with different denominators
Fractions with different denominators are compared by placing them on the same number line or by renaming them with a common denominator, and a benchmark such as one half settles many comparisons at once.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPercentages on a metre rule and a jug
A percentage is a number of hundredths of a whole, so on a metre rule 40 percent is 40 cm and on a 250 mL jug it is 100 mL.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPlanning a class event to a set budget from advertised prices, then checking the spend
A plan is built by turning a number of people into a number of packs, packs into a cost and a cost into a decision against a fixed budget, and the model is only finished when the real docket is set beside the plan and the difference is accounted for.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRectangles from counters: factors, primes and square numbers
The rectangles that can be made from a number of counters show its factors, a prime makes only a single row, and a square number makes a square.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRemainders in context: 50 shared into groups of 6
The same division, 50 ÷ 6, has different answers in different situations: round up when everyone needs a place, drop the remainder when only full groups count, and split it into a fraction or decimal when the quantity can be cut.
PracticalLow riskRuler drop: measuring reaction time and comparing two hands
Reaction time can be measured by how far a falling ruler drops before it is caught, and a class investigation compares two groups of such measurements with displays on a shared scale.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSame fence, different paddocks: fixed perimeter, changing area
Rectangles with the same perimeter can have very different areas, and the area is largest when the sides are closest to equal.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSieve of Eratosthenes: an algorithm that finds the primes to 100
Crossing out the multiples of each prime in turn removes every composite number, and once the multiples of 2, 3, 5 and 7 are gone every number left up to 100 is prime, because 11 × 11 is already more than 100.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSlicing prisms: parallel cross-sections
Every slice of a prism parallel to its base is the same shape and size as the base, and objects that are not prisms give slices that change.
PracticalLow riskSlide, flip, turn: transformations with tracing paper and tessellations
A translation, a reflection or a rotation moves a shape without changing its size or angles, and shapes tessellate when the angles meeting at each point add to 360 degrees.
Practical, model not builtLow riskThousandths: decimals on a metre and a zooming number line
A millimetre is one thousandth of a metre, so decimals with three places are lengths on a metre rule and are ordered by looking at each place in turn.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTruncated axes: how a column graph can exaggerate a difference
When the vertical axis of a column graph starts above zero, the column heights no longer compare the values, so a small difference can look large, and redrawing from zero shows the true comparison.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTwo dice: why 7 comes up most
The sums of two dice are not equally likely because more pairs of faces make 7 than make 2 or 12, and many rolls show the counts settling towards those chances.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTwo strips and a split pin: quadrilaterals from their diagonals
Two strips pinned together act as the diagonals of a quadrilateral, and measuring the sides and angles of each shape they make, and folding it along its diagonals, shows which quadrilateral it is and which diagonals are lines of symmetry.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWhich nets fold into a cube
A net is a flat arrangement of faces that folds into an object, and only some arrangements of six squares fold into a cube.
PracticalLow riskWhich scales: choosing units and instruments for mass
Different scales read to different steps, so the unit and the instrument are chosen to suit the object, and grams, kilograms and tonnes convert by thousands.
PracticalLow riskA transversal on parallel lines: measuring the three angle relationships
When a transversal crosses parallel lines, corresponding angles are equal, alternate angles are equal and co-interior angles add to 180 degrees, and none of these hold when the lines are not parallel.
PracticalLow riskAngle sum of a triangle: torn corners on a straight line, checked with a protractor
The three interior angles of any triangle, placed together, make a straight angle, so they sum to 180 degrees whatever the triangle's shape.
PracticalLow riskDrawing pins: a chance experiment with no theoretical answer
When the outcomes of a trial are not equally likely, the only way to estimate a probability is from the relative frequency of many trials, and the estimate steadies as trials accumulate.
PracticalLow riskHand span of the class: mean, median, mode, range and the effect of one outlier
A continuous measurement collected from everyone in the room gives a distribution whose centre and spread can be summarised, and one extreme value moves the mean and the range while moving the median by at most half the gap between the two middle values.
Practical, model not builtLow riskInterlocking cube models: top, front and side views and isometric drawings
A solid built from cubes can be represented by its top, front and side views and by an isometric drawing, each of which shows some features and hides others, and outline views alone can fail to fix how many cubes a model contains.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMatchstick growing patterns: from a table of values to a linear rule
A growing row of squares adds the same number of sticks each time, so the count follows a rule of the form M = 3n + 1 that can be read from the structure, tabulated and plotted as points on a straight line that does not pass through the origin.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMeasuring pi: circumference divided by diameter for real round objects
For every circle the circumference is the same multiple of the diameter, and that multiple, measured with string and a ruler, comes out a little over 3.
PracticalLow riskParallelogram and triangle area by cutting and rearranging
A parallelogram cut along a perpendicular height and rearranged becomes a rectangle with the same base and height, so its area is base × height whatever its slant, and any triangle is half of the parallelogram made from two copies of it.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRates from timed walking: a distance-time graph from real data
Speed is a rate, distance per unit time, and it appears as the gradient of a distance-time graph drawn from stopwatch readings taken at measured marks.
Practical, model not builtLow riskReaction time from a falling ruler: a formula, a table of values and class data
The distance a ruler falls before it is caught converts to a reaction time through the formula t = sqrt(2d/g), and repeating the catch gives a data set whose centre and spread can be compared between people or conditions.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRolling one die: relative frequency settles towards one sixth
The relative frequency of a face on a fair die wanders in a short run and settles towards the theoretical probability of 1/6 as the number of rolls grows, and the complement (not a six) settles towards 5/6.
Practical, model not builtLow riskScale drawing of the classroom at 1:50
A ratio of 1:50 turns every measured length in the room into a drawn length one fiftieth as long, and every drawn length back into a real one by multiplying by 50.
PracticalLow riskSquare numbers and square roots with tiles
A number is a perfect square when its tiles form a square array, its square root is the side of that array, and a number with tiles left over has a square root between two whole numbers.
PracticalLow riskVolume of a rectangular prism: packing centicubes and filling with water
The volume of a prism is the number of unit cubes in one layer times the number of layers, and 1 cubic centimetre holds 1 millilitre, so a box measured in centimetres predicts the water it holds.
Practical, model not builtLow riskA dripping tap: measuring a rate and scaling it to litres per day and per year
A rate compares two quantities with different units, so a volume collected in a measured time gives millilitres per minute, which is the gradient of a straight volume-time graph and scales by unit conversion to litres per day and per year.
Practical, model not builtLow riskArea and perimeter of a composite outdoor space, measured with a tape and trundle wheel
The area of an irregular site is found by dissecting it into rectangles, triangles and trapeziums whose dimensions are measured; two different dissections must give the same total, and the perimeter is measured and computed separately because area and perimeter do not change together.
Practical, model not builtLow riskArea of a circle: cutting sectors into a near-rectangle
A circle cut into many equal sectors and laid alternately point up and point down forms a shape close to a rectangle with height r and base half the circumference, which is where A = πr² comes from.
PracticalLow riskPythagoras by measurement: squares on dotty paper and a 3-4-5 rope
The square on the hypotenuse has the same area as the two squares on the other sides, which can be counted on dotty paper and checked with a tape measure on a knotted rope that forms a right angle.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRandom samples from a known population: how sample size changes the spread of sample means
Samples drawn at random from the same population give different means, and the means of larger samples cluster more closely around the population mean, so the spread of the sample means shrinks as the sample size grows.
Practical, model not builtLow riskVolume of a cylinder: formula, measuring cylinder and displacement
The volume computed from πr²h agrees with the water a cylindrical container holds and with the water an equal solid displaces, tying a formula to two independent measurements.
PracticalLow riskBox plots of reaction time: dominant against non-dominant hand
A five-number summary and a box plot let two sets of measurements be compared on centre, spread, shape and outliers in one display.
Practical, model not builtLow riskBuffon's needle: estimating pi by dropping toothpicks on ruled lines
When toothpicks as long as the line spacing are scattered at random over ruled lines, the long-run proportion that cross a line is 2/π (Buffon's 1777 result, whose proof needs calculus and is taken as given here), so the relative frequency of crossings estimates 2/π and hence pi, and the estimate tightens as drops accumulate.
Practical, model not builtLow riskClimate Data Online: daily maximum temperatures for two months compared
A public data set of daily observations can be downloaded, summarised and displayed so that two distributions are compared on centre, spread, shape and outliers with the real numbers behind them.
PracticalLow riskCompass constructions: bisectors and an equilateral triangle, then measured
Constructions made with a compass and straight edge produce equal lengths and equal angles by design, and measuring the result with a ruler and protractor confirms the properties the construction guarantees.
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.