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 7 of 20
Extracting DNA from a banana or an onion
DNA is a physical substance present in every cell, and it can be released by breaking membranes and made visible by precipitating it in cold alcohol.
PracticalLow riskFlame tests: identifying metals by the colour of their light
Each element gives out light of its own colours when its electrons drop back to lower energy levels, so a flame colour identifies the metal in a compound.
PracticalMedium riskGas volume against time: reading a rate from the gradient
Rate is the gradient of a product-against-time graph, steepest at the start when reactant concentration is highest and zero when the magnesium has all reacted.
PracticalMedium riskGravity acts on every mass alike: dropping a heavy and a light ball together
Objects of different mass fall with the same acceleration when air resistance is negligible, because the gravitational force on each is proportional to its mass, so by a = F / m every mass gains speed at the same rate.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHot things glow: a dimmed lamp, the Sun and the cosmic microwave background
Any hot object gives out a continuous spectrum whose peak wavelength is inversely proportional to its temperature, which is why a dimmed lamp glows red, the Sun peaks in visible light and the 2.7 K glow left from the early universe peaks in microwaves.
Practical, model not builtLow riskLand ice and sea ice: which one raises sea level
Floating ice already displaces its own mass of water, so melting sea ice barely changes sea level, while ice that melts on land adds new water to the ocean.
PracticalLow riskLithium and sodium in water: reactivity down group 1
Elements in the same group react in the same way and their reactivity changes in a regular order down the group, which the periodic table was built to show.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalHigh riskLumps against powder: surface area and the rate of reaction on a balance
Only particles at a surface can collide with the acid, so the same mass of solid in smaller pieces reacts faster although the total gas made is the same.
PracticalMedium riskMaking a plastic from potato starch and changing it with glycerol
A polymer's properties depend on how its chains are held together, so adding a plasticiser such as glycerol turns a brittle starch film into a flexible one, and a starch plastic can be broken down by soil organisms that cannot digest polyethylene.
PracticalLow riskMetals competing for salts: building a reactivity series on a spotting tile
A more reactive metal displaces a less reactive metal from a solution of its salt, so a grid of metal-against-salt tests orders the metals.
PracticalLow riskModelling meiosis with model chromosomes: independent assortment and gamete variety
Meiosis halves the chromosome number and, because each homologous pair lines up independently of the others, one parent can make 2 to the power n different gametes from n chromosome pairs before crossing over is counted.
Practical, model not builtLow riskNewton's first law: coin and card, glass on paper, and a passenger on a stopping trolley
An object keeps its state of rest or steady motion unless a net force acts on it, so removing the surface beneath an object quickly lets it stay in place and stopping a trolley suddenly lets its passenger keep moving.
PracticalLow riskNewton's second law: accelerating a trolley with hanging masses
The acceleration of an object is proportional to the net force on it and inversely proportional to its mass, so F = m a can be tested by changing one and measuring the other.
Practical, model not builtLow riskNewton's third law: balloon rocket, paired newton meters and trolleys pushing apart
Forces come in pairs: when one object pushes or pulls on another, the second pushes or pulls back on the first with an equal force in the opposite direction.
PracticalMedium riskRoot tip squash: seeing mitosis and counting a mitotic index
New cells arise by mitosis in growing regions, and the fraction of cells caught dividing at any moment can be counted from a stained squash.
PracticalMedium riskSalt, sugar and wax: properties that reveal ionic and covalent substances
Ionic substances such as sodium chloride have high melting points and conduct only when their ions are free to move, while covalent molecular substances such as sugar and wax melt easily and never conduct.
PracticalMedium riskSooty selection: camouflage, predation and allele frequencies over generations
Predators remove the individuals they can see, so the colour that matches the background rises in frequency generation by generation, and the direction reverses when the background changes.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSpectral fingerprints: hydrogen lines through a diffraction grating, and redshift
Each element gives out and absorbs light only at its own set of wavelengths, so the lines in a galaxy's light identify its elements, and the same pattern shifted to longer wavelengths measures how fast the galaxy is moving away.
Teacher-led demonstrationPractical, model not builtMedium riskSynthesis, decomposition and displacement: three reactions, three patterns
Reactions fall into patterns that can be read from their equations: two substances joining, one splitting, or one element taking the place of another.
PracticalMedium riskThe disappearing cross: how concentration changes the rate of reaction
Rate rises with concentration because more particles per volume means more collisions per second; the time for a fixed amount of product to form falls in proportion.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskThe expanding balloon: Hubble's law from dots on a surface
If space itself stretches, every galaxy sees every other moving away at a speed in proportion to its distance, with no centre to the expansion, which is the pattern Hubble found and the big bang model explains.
Practical, model not builtLow riskThe greenhouse bottle demonstration: testing a popular claim with an argon control
Two sealed bottles under a lamp, one holding carbon dioxide, usually give the result the greenhouse effect predicts, but Wagoner, Liu and Tobin (2010) showed that such a result can come from heat transfer rather than infrared absorption, and that argon, as dense but absorbing no infrared, is the control that separates the two, so the demonstration has to be evaluated rather than trusted.
Teacher-led demonstrationPracticalMedium riskThermal expansion of water: a flask thermometer for sea-level rise
Water expands as it warms, so an ocean that absorbs heat takes up more room and sea level rises even before any ice melts.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTicker-tape analysis: velocity-time graph of a trolley rolling down a ramp
A trolley rolling down a ramp gains speed at a steady rate, which appears as ticker-tape dots spreading out evenly and as a straight rising line on a velocity-time graph whose gradient is the acceleration.
Practical, model not builtLow riskVariation in the class: continuous measurements and the myth of single-gene traits
Most human traits vary continuously and depend on many genes and the environment, so class data for tongue rolling or earlobe shape do not fit a single dominant and recessive allele.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWarm it up: how temperature changes the rate of the thiosulfate reaction
Raising the temperature makes the particles move faster, so they collide more often and more energetically, and the reaction goes faster.
PracticalMedium riskWater cycle in a box: energy that lifts water and cold that returns it
Evaporation takes about 2.4 kJ from the water for every gram it lifts into the air and condensation gives it back, so the water cycle is also one of the main ways energy moves from the ocean to the atmosphere.
PracticalLow riskZinc in copper sulfate: a displacement reaction you can measure by its heat
In a displacement reaction a more reactive metal takes the place of a less reactive one in its salt solution and releases energy, so the temperature rise in the same copper(II) sulfate solution compares how readily different metals displace copper.
PracticalMedium riskAverage and instantaneous velocity from a ticker-timer tape (syllabus practical)
A dot pattern made at a known rate turns a moving trolley into a position-time record from which average and instantaneous velocity are read as gradients.
Practical, model not builtLow riskAverage power in mechanical processes: stair climb and pulley lift (syllabus practical)
Power is the rate of doing work, so raising a known weight through a measured height in a measured time gives the average power directly.
PracticalLow riskBeats from two tuning forks or two close tones
Two waves of slightly different frequency drift in and out of step, so their sum swells and fades at the difference frequency.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCharging by friction and induction: sticky tape, electroscope and the bending water stream (syllabus practical)
Rubbing transfers electrons between surfaces, like charges repel, unlike charges attract, and a charged object attracts a neutral one by polarising it.
Teacher-led demonstrationPractical, model not builtMedium riskCoefficient of kinetic friction with a spring balance
The kinetic friction force between two surfaces grows in proportion to the normal force, and the constant of proportionality is a property of the pair of surfaces.
PracticalLow riskCreating mechanical waves on a slinky: transverse, longitudinal and the role of the medium (syllabus practical)
A mechanical wave transfers energy through a medium whose particles oscillate about fixed positions, either across or along the direction of travel.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCurrent-voltage characteristics of a resistor, a filament lamp and a diode
A metallic resistor at constant temperature obeys Ohm's law, while a heating filament and a diode do not, which shows the law's usefulness and its limits.
Practical, model not builtLow riskDispersion of white light with a prism, and Herschel's infrared thermometer (syllabus practical)
The refractive index of glass depends on wavelength, so a prism deviates violet more than red and spreads white light into a spectrum.
PracticalLow riskDisplacement, distance and the sign of velocity: a tumbling toy car and a motion sensor (syllabus practical)
Velocity carries a direction, so a position-time graph slopes up while an object moves away from the origin and down while it returns, and a round trip has zero displacement but a non-zero distance.
PracticalLow riskElectromagnet strength against current and turns: magnetising an iron core
A current in a coil aligns the domains of an iron core so the core becomes a magnet whose strength grows with current and turns until the domains are all aligned.
PracticalLow riskEnergy transfer by conduction, convection and radiation, and a thermal conductivity measurement
A hot object loses energy by particle collisions through a solid, by bulk flow of a fluid, and by electromagnetic radiation, at rates set by the material and the temperature difference.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskHow hot is a Bunsen flame? Specific heat applied to a heated metal cylinder
A hot metal dropped into water reaches thermal equilibrium, and energy conservation lets the metal's starting temperature be found from the water's rise.
PracticalMedium riskImage formation with converging lenses and curved mirrors on an optical bench (syllabus practical)
Rays from each point of an object are redirected by a lens or mirror to meet at an image point whose position and size follow from the focal length.
Practical, model not builtLow riskImpulse from a force-time graph: cart into a spring bumper and bouncing ball
The area under a force-time graph equals the change in momentum, so a longer collision time means a smaller peak force for the same impulse.
Practical, model not builtLow riskLatent heat of fusion: ice in water calorimetry and a stearic acid cooling curve (syllabus practical)
During a change of state energy is transferred without a change of temperature, and that hidden energy per kilogram is the latent heat.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskMagnetic field lines of bar magnets with iron filings, compasses and a phone magnetometer
A magnet's field can be mapped by the direction a compass points, and the field is strongest where the lines are closest, at the poles.
PracticalLow riskMagnetic field of a straight wire and a solenoid against current, measured with a phone magnetometer (syllabus practical)
A current produces a magnetic field whose strength grows in proportion to the current and, for a solenoid, to the turns per metre.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMapping electric fields and equipotentials on conductive paper
Field lines run from positive to negative electrodes, cross equipotential lines at right angles, and are closest where the potential changes fastest.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMeasuring the acceleration due to gravity in free fall (syllabus practical)
An object released from rest falls with a constant acceleration that a timed drop over a measured height reveals as g.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMomentum in one- and two-dimensional collisions (syllabus practical)
In a closed system the total momentum before a collision equals the total after, whether or not kinetic energy is conserved.
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.