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 3 of 20
Blubber glove: how a fat layer keeps a seal warm in cold water
A structural feature, a thick fat layer, slows heat loss and lets an animal survive in cold water, and the effect can be measured as the temperature a thermometer holds inside a fat-lined glove.
PracticalLow riskCamouflage hunt: which colour survives on the grass?
Colour that matches the habitat is a survival feature, and counting which coloured items a class of predators finds first turns camouflage into data.
PracticalLow riskFood dye in hot and cold water: particles move faster when warm
Particles in a liquid are always moving and move faster when warmer, so a drop of dye spreads through warm water sooner than through cold, though the fast swirling seen in a glass is mostly currents and true particle spreading is slow.
Practical, model not builtLow riskFreeze-thaw weathering: ice cracks a plaster rock
Water in a crack expands by about 9 percent when it freezes and can split rock, a slow change that a plaster brick with a water-filled cavity reproduces in a freezer overnight.
PracticalLow riskLeaf shape and water loss: flat leaf, rolled leaf, waxy leaf
Plants in dry habitats have small, rolled or waxy leaves because water loss depends on the surface exposed to air, which a learner can show with paper leaves of equal mass and a balance.
PracticalLow riskLight travels in straight lines: the three-card test
Light travels in straight lines, so a torch is seen through three holes only when the holes line up, and a shadow has the shape of the object that stops the light.
PracticalLow riskPinhole camera: an upside-down image proves light goes straight
Light from each point of a scene passes straight through a tiny hole and lands on the opposite side of the screen, so the image is inverted, and a ray diagram drawn to scale shows its size: halve the distance to the object and the image doubles.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRain on bare soil and covered soil: measuring runoff and washed-away sediment
Plant cover and mulch slow rain, so less water runs off and far less soil is carried away, which is why erosion control on farms and building sites starts with keeping the ground covered.
PracticalLow riskRock tumbling with sugar cubes: physical weathering by the shake
Rocks knocked together in a river or by waves lose their corners and shed grains, and shaking sugar cubes in a jar measures that wear as mass lost against number of knocks.
PracticalLow riskShadow size: moving the object toward the torch
A shadow grows when the object moves closer to a small light source and shrinks when it moves toward the screen, because the light travels in straight lines that spread out from the source.
Practical, model not builtLow riskShadow stick: tracking the Sun across a school day
A shadow forms where an object stops light travelling in straight lines from the Sun, so the length and direction of a stick's shadow record the Sun's height and position through the day and the year.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSquash the syringe: gases compress, liquids do not
Gas particles are far apart with empty space between them, so a sealed syringe of air can be pushed to half its volume, while water particles are already touching and the plunger will not move.
Practical, model not builtLow riskStream table: watching water carve a landscape
Moving water erodes, transports and deposits sediment, and a tray of sand on a slope shows the channel, the load and the fan forming, with slope and flow as the variables that change them.
PracticalLow riskStretch and roll: how a stronger push sends a car farther
A stronger applied force, here a rubber band stretched further, transfers more energy to a toy car, so it rolls farther before friction stops it; for a band that stretches evenly, doubling the stretch roughly quadruples the distance.
Practical, model not builtLow riskThe bending pencil and the reappearing coin: refraction
Light changes direction when it passes from air into water, so a straight pencil looks bent at the surface and a coin hidden by a cup's rim comes into view when water is poured in.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWhich beak for which food? Tongs, tweezers and spoons as bird beaks
A bird's beak shape suits the food in its habitat, and modelling beaks with tools shows how a structural feature decides what an animal can eat and where it can survive.
PracticalLow riskConductor or insulator? Testing materials in a circuit
Electrical energy is transferred round a circuit only along a complete path of conducting material, so a material placed in a gap in a cell-and-globe circuit sorts itself as a conductor (the globe lights) or an insulator (it stays dark).
PracticalLow riskDesigning a light for a blackout
Electrical energy from cells is transformed into light in a circuit, and a designed light with a switch, a chosen light source and a reflector meets a need only when it is tested against measured criteria.
PracticalLow riskDissolving and getting it back: separating sand and salt
Dissolving is a reversible change: salt dissolved in water passes through a filter that stops sand and is recovered unchanged when the water evaporates, with its mass back on the balance.
PracticalLow riskFizz in a sealed bottle: a new substance, and no mass lost
Bicarbonate of soda and vinegar react to make new substances, including carbon dioxide gas, an irreversible change; in a sealed bottle the total mass stays the same, and it falls only when the gas is let out.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskGlobe and lamp: why winter days are shorter
Earth spins on an axis tilted 23.4 degrees from the perpendicular to its orbit, so the axis itself stands 66.6 degrees from the plane of the orbit, and it keeps pointing the same way in space, so as Earth goes round the Sun each hemisphere spends more or less of each turn in sunlight, giving long summer days and short winter days.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHeat and food: which changes can be undone?
Heating melts chocolate and butter, changes that reverse on cooling, but sets egg white and browns bread, changes that make new substances and cannot be undone.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskLemon cells: chemical energy into electrical energy
Two different metals in an acidic fruit make a cell that transforms chemical energy into electrical energy; one cell gives less than 1 V and a tiny current, so cells are joined in series to light an LED.
PracticalLow riskLight or dark: how light changes the way seedlings grow
Light is a physical condition a plant needs to make its own food, so seedlings in darkness grow tall, thin and yellow and then collapse once the food stored in the seed is used up, while seedlings in light grow short, sturdy and green.
PracticalLow riskMeasuring the Earth with two shadows: an Eratosthenes experiment between two schools
Because Earth is a sphere, the noon Sun stands at different heights at places north and south of each other, and the difference in angle together with the distance between them gives Earth's circumference, a measurement that needs two groups working together.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRising salt: how salty water affects germinating seeds
Salt in soil water is a physical condition that is rising in parts of Australia's farmland, and as its concentration increases fewer seeds germinate, they germinate later and their roots grow shorter.
PracticalLow riskRusting steel wool: what it needs and how much air it uses
Rusting is an irreversible change in which iron combines with oxygen and water to form a new substance, so steel wool rusts only when both are present, rusts faster with salt, and uses up the oxygen in the air around it.
PracticalLow riskSchoolyard habitats: measuring physical conditions and counting who lives there
Places a few metres apart in one schoolyard have measurably different temperature, light and soil moisture, and the number and kinds of small animals living in each follow those physical conditions.
PracticalMedium riskShake table: which structure survives an earthquake?
Sudden shaking of the ground in an earthquake pushes structures from side to side, and a frame braced with triangles on a wide base resists the shaking far better than an unbraced rectangular frame, which is why buildings in earthquake zones are braced.
PracticalLow riskSolar cell angle test: light energy into electrical energy
A solar cell transforms light energy into electrical energy, and the current it delivers depends on how directly the sunlight strikes it, which is why rooftop panels are tilted toward the Sun.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTorch on graph paper: why low winter sunshine heats less
A beam of sunlight arriving at a low angle spreads over a larger area of ground, so each square metre receives less energy; together with shorter days this, not Earth's distance from the Sun, makes winter colder than summer.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTwo globes, two ways: series and parallel circuits
In a series circuit the energy from the cells is shared along one path, so two globes glow dimly, while in a parallel circuit each globe has its own path to the cells and glows almost as brightly as one alone, drawing more current and emptying the cells faster.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWalking the solar system: a scale model on the school grounds
The planets orbit the Sun at vast and very unequal distances, and a planet farther out takes longer to complete one orbit, which a model built at one scale for both distance and size makes visible.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWattle seeds and heat: why some Australian plants need fire
Many wattle seeds have a hard, waterproof coat that keeps water out until heat, such as the heat of a bushfire, cracks it, so a change in a physical condition decides when a new generation starts to grow.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskA month of Moon observations
Recording the Moon's shape, direction and time each day reveals the 29.5 day cycle and the Moon rising about 50 minutes later each day, the same lag that moves the tides later each day.
PracticalLow riskAir resistance and terminal speed: dropping stacked paper cake cases
A falling object stops speeding up when air resistance grows to equal its weight, so a heavier stack of the same shape reaches a higher steady speed.
Practical, model not builtLow riskAmmonia and hydrogen chloride diffusing along a tube: the white ring
Gases diffuse at speeds set by their particle mass, so two gases released at opposite ends of a tube meet nearer the heavier gas.
Teacher-led demonstrationPractical, model not builtHigh riskBalanced and unbalanced forces: two newton meters pulling a trolley
When two opposing pulls on an object are equal it stays at rest or keeps its motion, and when they differ the object accelerates in the direction of the larger pull.
Practical, model not builtLow riskBrine shrimp hatching: the effect of salinity on an abiotic tolerance
An abiotic factor sets a range within which an organism can complete part of its life cycle, and hatching success falls outside that range.
PracticalLow riskBrownian motion: smoke particles jostled by air molecules under a microscope
Invisible air molecules are moving fast and at random, because visible smoke specks they strike jiggle without any other cause.
PracticalLow riskBuilding an electromagnet: how turns of wire and current change its strength
An electric current in a coil produces a magnetic field, and the field grows with more turns of wire and with more current.
PracticalMedium riskConstructing a dichotomous key for ten school-ground plants
A useful key is built from observable, unambiguous structural characters, and separating n groups always takes n minus 1 couplets.
PracticalLow riskCooling curve of stearic acid: temperature holds steady while a liquid freezes
During a change of state the temperature stays constant even though the substance keeps losing heat, because the energy goes into rearranging particles rather than slowing them.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskDensity of tap water and seawater from a mass-volume graph
Density is the mass of each millilitre of a substance, so the gradient of a mass-against-volume graph measures it, and dissolved salt packs more mass into the same volume.
PracticalLow riskDesign a separation: iron filings, sand, sawdust and salt
Each separation technique exploits one property difference, so a multi-part mixture needs a sequence of techniques chosen from the properties of its parts.
PracticalLow riskDiffusion in a liquid: ions meeting inside a single water drop
Dissolved particles spread through still water on their own; where the particles from two crystals meet they react to form a yellow solid, which marks the meeting point.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskDuckweed population growth: exponential start, limited finish
A population with plenty of resources grows by a constant proportion each day, and growth slows as space or nutrients run out.
Practical, model not builtLow riskEratosthenes: measuring Earth's circumference with a partner school
Two noon shadows at different latitudes on the same day give the angle between the two sites, and the north-south distance between them scaled by 360 degrees over that angle gives Earth's circumference.
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.