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 4 of 20
Eutrophication in a jar: fertiliser run-off and algal growth
Adding nutrients to still water increases producer growth, and the extra biomass changes the conditions for every other organism in the system.
PracticalLow riskFriction: force needed to slide a loaded wooden slider on different surfaces
The friction force between two surfaces depends on the materials and on how hard the surfaces press together, not on the area in contact.
Practical, model not builtLow riskGas particles move: carbon dioxide diffusing between two test tubes
Gas particles are in constant random motion, so a gas spreads into the space available even without stirring or wind.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHooke's law: extension of a steel spring against load
A spring stretches by an amount proportional to the force pulling it, until it is stretched past its elastic limit.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHow magnetic pull falls off with distance: paperclips through card spacers
A magnetic force acts without contact and weakens quickly as the gap between magnet and object grows.
PracticalLow riskHow much dissolves: a solubility curve for ammonium chloride
The mass of a solid that a fixed mass of water can hold in solution rises with temperature, and a saturated solution gives back crystals as it cools.
PracticalLow riskKepler's third law from the planetary fact sheet
Orbital period and distance are locked together: the square of the period grows as the cube of the distance, so the outer planets crawl while Mercury races.
Calculation and dataLow riskLeaf litter invertebrates: Tullgren funnel extraction and a dichotomous key
Organisms are classified by shared structural features, and a dichotomous key turns those features into a repeatable series of either-or choices that ends in a named group.
Practical, model not builtLow riskLevers: balancing a metre rule to find the law of moments
A lever balances when force times distance on one side of the pivot equals force times distance on the other, so a small force far from the pivot can balance a large force close to it.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMapping the field around a bar magnet with iron filings and a plotting compass
A magnet exerts a non-contact force through the space around it, and the pattern of that field can be drawn as lines running from north pole to south pole that are closest where the field is strongest.
PracticalLow riskMoon phases with a ball on a stick
Half the Moon is always sunlit; the phase is the part of that lit half that faces Earth, set by the angle between Sun, Earth and Moon.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPaper chromatography of the dyes on coloured sweets
A colour that looks single can be a mixture of dyes, and they separate because each is carried up the paper by water to a different extent.
PracticalLow riskPond water under the microscope: protists, algae and the kingdoms of life
Living things include single-celled organisms that move, feed and photosynthesise, and they are classified into kingdoms by cell structure rather than by size.
PracticalLow riskPulleys: measuring effort and rope distance for fixed and movable pulleys
A movable pulley halves the force needed to lift a load but doubles the length of rope pulled, so the work done stays the same.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRamps: force needed to pull a trolley up a slope at different angles
A ramp lets a smaller force move a load upward because only part of the load's weight acts along the slope, and the part grows as the slope steepens.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRandom quadrat sampling: estimating how many plants are on the oval
A population too large to count is estimated from random samples, and the estimate tightens as the number of samples grows.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSeed germination and abiotic factors: temperature, water and salt
Germination needs water and a suitable temperature but not light for many species, and each factor can be tested one at a time with a controlled comparison.
PracticalLow riskSeparating sand and salt by dissolving, filtering and evaporating
A mixture can be separated using a property in which its parts differ: salt dissolves in water and sand does not.
PracticalLow riskShadow stick: tracking the Sun across a school day
Earth's rotation carries the Sun across the sky, so a vertical stick's shadow swings and shortens to a minimum at solar noon, which is not 12:00 by the clock; the length of that noon shadow changes with the seasons because Earth's tilted axis changes the Sun's noon height.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSimple distillation: recovering pure water from salt water
Boiling turns only the water into vapour, so condensing that vapour gives water without the dissolved salt.
PracticalMedium riskSimple pendulum: what changes the time for one swing
The period of a pendulum depends on its length and on gravity, not on the mass of the bob or the size of a small swing.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSolar and lunar eclipses: shadows of a ball and a globe
An eclipse needs the Sun, Earth and Moon in a straight line; the Moon's tilted orbit keeps its shadow above or below Earth on most months, and the shadow's cone length decides whether a solar eclipse is total or annular.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSolar system to scale on the oval
At one scale the planets are specks metres to hundreds of metres apart, which no textbook diagram can show without breaking the scale.
Practical, model not builtLow riskStars return about 4 minutes earlier each night: the sidereal day and the Emu in the Sky
Because Earth moves along its orbit, a star comes back to the same place in the sky 3 minutes 56 seconds earlier each night, so the evening sky shifts through the year, a cycle that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have long used as a calendar.
Practical, model not builtLow riskStatic electricity: charging balloons and rods by rubbing
Rubbing two insulating materials together transfers charge, and charged objects then exert non-contact forces of attraction or repulsion.
PracticalLow riskSun angle and energy per square metre: a torch on graph paper
The same beam spread over a larger patch delivers less energy to each square metre, which is why a low winter Sun warms the ground less than a high summer Sun.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTides at Fort Denison: reading the Moon in the tide table
The Moon's and Sun's gravity raise two tidal bulges, so a coast sees two highs and two lows in a lunar day of 24 h 50 min, and the highs are largest when Sun and Moon line up at new and full Moon.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTilted globe around a lamp: seasons and day length
Earth's axis keeps pointing the same way in space as it orbits, so each hemisphere leans toward the Sun for half the year and away for the other half, changing noon Sun height and day length together.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWater filter challenge: what filtering removes and what it cannot
A layered filter traps suspended particles by size, so muddy water comes out clearer, but dissolved substances pass straight through because their particles are far smaller than any gap in the filter.
PracticalLow riskWeight and mass: hanging known masses from a newton meter
Weight is the gravitational force on a mass, so the newton-meter reading rises in direct proportion to the mass hung from it and the gradient is the gravitational field strength.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWinnowing and yandying: separating seed from husk and sand
First Nations Australians separate seed from husk by winnowing (air carries off the lighter husk) and from sand by yandying (shaking a tilted dish sends small dense grains to the bottom), each technique exploiting a difference in density and particle size.
PracticalLow riskA mantle plume in a beaker, and why convection is no longer the plate engine
Heated viscous material rises as a plume and spreads at the surface, which models hotspots; the same demonstration shows how a model once taught as the cause of plate motion was replaced when better evidence pointed to slab pull.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskAlgal balls and hydrogencarbonate indicator: photosynthesis and respiration in one tube
Photosynthesis removes carbon dioxide from water and respiration adds it, and an indicator that tracks carbon dioxide shows which process dominates under each light condition.
PracticalLow riskAquifer in a tank: water table, wells and a leaking pollutant
Rain soaks into permeable layers and collects above impermeable ones; a well draws the water table down into a cone, and anything spilled at the surface follows the flow to the well.
PracticalLow riskBlue to white and back: water of crystallisation in copper(II) sulfate
Heating drives water out of blue copper(II) sulfate crystals, leaving a white solid of lower mass, and adding water turns the powder blue and warm again, so the water was part of the crystals rather than dampness on their surface.
PracticalMedium riskBouncing ball: how much energy survives each bounce
A dropped ball returns to a fixed fraction of its drop height on each bounce, and the missing fraction has been transformed into thermal energy and sound.
Practical, model not builtLow riskBuild a micro:bit seismometer and record a classroom quake
A seismometer records ground shaking against time; a home-built one shows that the record's size falls with distance from the source, while locating a real earthquake needs arrival times at several stations.
PracticalLow riskChemical weathering: carbonic acid from your own breath on limestone
Carbon dioxide dissolving in water makes carbonic acid, and that weak acid dissolves limestone and marble; the same reaction shapes caves and weathers gravestones.
PracticalMedium riskConduction: which metal carries heat fastest
Thermal energy passes along a solid from the hot end to the cold end at a rate that depends on the material, with copper conducting far faster than steel.
PracticalMedium riskConvection: watching a coloured current circulate in heated water
Heated liquid expands, becomes less dense and rises while cooler liquid sinks to replace it, setting up a circulating current that carries thermal energy through the fluid.
PracticalMedium riskCooling rate and crystal size with molten salol
Slow cooling gives atoms time to join large crystals, fast cooling freezes many small ones; that is why granite is coarse and basalt is fine.
PracticalMedium riskDensity of granite, basalt and pumice by water displacement
Rocks of the same size differ in mass because their minerals and pore spaces differ, and the density difference between continental and oceanic rock is what lets one plate sink beneath another.
Practical, model not builtLow riskEnergy from a burning fuel: heating water with a spirit burner
Burning a fuel transfers energy to its surroundings; the temperature rise of a fixed mass of water shows how much of it reaches the water, and the flame also heats the air and the apparatus, so only part of the energy is captured.
PracticalMedium riskEnergy transfer in a pendulum: height at release against speed at the bottom
Gravitational potential energy stored by lifting the bob transforms into kinetic energy at the bottom of the swing and back again, so the bob returns to almost its release height.
Practical, model not builtLow riskFreeze-thaw weathering of porous rock in a freezer
Water expands by about 9 percent when it freezes, so water in pores and cracks levers rock apart a little more on each freeze, and porous rocks fall apart first.
PracticalLow riskGeological time walk: 4,600 million years on a 46 metre tape
Rock-cycle processes take millions of years; laying Earth's history along a tape at one centimetre per million years puts all of human existence in the last few millimetres.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHow far has Australia moved in your lifetime: plate motion from the national datum
Plates move a few centimetres a year, a rate a class can set beside its own fingernail growth; Australia's motion is large enough that the country's map coordinates had to be moved by about 1.8 metres between 1994 and 2020.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHow much of the air is used up when iron wool rusts
Rusting uses only the oxygen in trapped air, so the water rises to replace about one fifth of the air column and no more.
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.