Lab
See the idea. Put it to the test.
956 practicals from Kindergarten to Year 12, in 9 subjects. A practical gives the idea, what you need, the steps, what you should see and a safety card. A teacher-led practical 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 practical 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 practicals 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 practicals 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 practical lists the NSW syllabus outcomes and Australian Curriculum v9 codes it supports. They are references, not a verified or complete curriculum alignment.
Find a practical
15 practicals
Geography K–10 · Geography · Places, Country and liveability
A term of weather and nature records beside a published Aboriginal seasonal calendar
Seasons can be read from plants, animals and weather in a place rather than from dates, and the Aboriginal calendar for a Country divides the year differently from the four-season calendar.
PracticalLow riskFeature walk: natural, managed and constructed features on a labelled map
Every feature of a local place can be sorted as natural, managed or constructed, and its position can be recorded on a map.
PracticalLow riskHow much water does our school use in a day
Water use can be measured in litres with a bucket and a timer, and a day's total for a place is the sum of many small uses.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMake a rain gauge and keep a monthly rainfall record
Rainfall is a depth of water spread over the ground, so a straight-sided container measures it in millimetres regardless of the container width.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCatchment model: where the rain goes
Rain that falls anywhere inside a catchment boundary drains to the same low point, carrying whatever is on the surface with it.
PracticalLow riskFire danger from the schoolyard: temperature, humidity and wind into the McArthur index
Fire danger is set by weather that can be measured, and it rises steeply with heat and wind and falls with humidity, which is why the same bush can be safe one afternoon and dangerous the next.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRead the bushfire prone land map around the school
Bush fire prone land is mapped by local councils and certified by the Commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, so the hazard around a place can be read from an official map and measured with its scale.
PracticalLow riskSurface temperature survey of the schoolyard with an infrared thermometer
Surface cover chosen by people (asphalt, concrete, grass, shade trees) sets how hot a surface becomes in the sun, which is the mechanism behind urban heat.
PracticalLow riskLiveability transect: measuring environmental quality at five sites
Environmental quality can be measured, not only felt: noise, shade, litter, traffic and surface heat differ along a walk through a suburb and can be scored and mapped.
PracticalLow riskWhere our things come from: a label survey and a flow-line map
Everyday goods connect a household to producing places around the world, and counting labels and drawing flow lines with measured widths turns that connection into a map.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWho lives within walking distance: buffers around services on a scaled map
Access to a service depends on distance, and a circle of fixed ground radius drawn to the map scale shows which homes are within that straight-line distance of it, which is not the same as being within that walking distance.
Practical, model not builtLow riskComputing the Human Development Index from its four indicators
Human development is measured by combining health, education and income indicators, each scaled between fixed goalposts and joined by a geometric mean, so a country cannot make up for a very low score in one dimension with a high score in another.
Calculation and dataLow riskMapping advantage and disadvantage: a choropleth from ABS SEIFA scores
Wellbeing varies across places within Australia, and a choropleth map of an index shows the pattern, but the classes chosen for the map change what the pattern appears to be.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMeasuring urban growth with a grid over annual satellite composites
Urban growth can be measured, not just described, by counting grid cells of built-up land in satellite images of the same frame from two years.
PracticalLow riskPopulation pyramid from Census data and a growth model checked against the ABS
A population's age and sex structure is drawn from counts, and its growth rate compounds, so a small annual percentage doubles a population within decades.
Practical, model not builtLow risk
For tutors and administrators
The materials and steps of every teacher-led practical are on the learning platform, with the safety card first. Sign in with a tutor or administrator account to read them.