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
14 practicals
Investigating Science 11–12 · Physics
A model house: testing wall and window materials for heat loss
A small model house and a heat-loss equation both predict how building materials change indoor temperature, and the model’s limits (scale, no sun, no draughts) are as instructive as its results.
Practical, model not builtLow riskConservation of energy in a pendulum measured with a light gate
The law of conservation of energy predicts a pendulum bob’s speed at the bottom of its swing from the height it was released, whatever its mass.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCounting background radiation: the irregular pattern of random decay
Radioactive decay is random, so counts in equal time intervals scatter irregularly, yet the scatter follows a Poisson distribution in which the variance equals the mean.
Practical, model not builtLow riskDistance and exposure: the inverse square law measured with light
Intensity from a small source falls with the square of the distance, a law whose predictions a measurement can test, and the reason distance from a radiation source is a basic way to reduce exposure.
Practical, model not builtLow riskEnergy transfer in a bounce: tennis ball rebound against the ITF standard
Energy is conserved but not kept as motion: a bouncing ball returns only part of its gravitational energy, and a regulation tennis ball must lose between about 42 and 47 per cent of it in each bounce.
Practical, model not builtLow riskFinding a hidden target with rolling marbles: a model of Rutherford scattering
Like Rutherford’s team, the learner infers the size and shape of something unseen from how often and how projectiles are deflected, and the inference sharpens as the number of trials grows.
Practical, model not builtLow riskOhm’s law as a prediction: resistor against filament lamp
A law earns acceptance by predicting results before they are measured: Ohm’s law predicts the current in a resistor, and a filament lamp shows the conditions under which it stops applying.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPredicting the return of Halley’s comet with Kepler’s third law
A pattern of returns about every 76 years led Halley to infer one comet on one orbit; Kepler’s third law turns the orbit’s size into a period, and the spread in real intervals shows what the simple law omits.
Calculation and dataLow riskThe Bernoulli effect measured in a Venturi tube
Where a flowing fluid speeds up through a narrow section its pressure falls, which a pair of water columns shows as a measurable height difference that Bernoulli’s equation predicts.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTiming a falling object: what quantitative data reveal that the eye cannot
A falling object gains speed at a constant rate, and only timed measurements show that a dense ball falls at about 9.8 m/s² while a light ball is slowed measurably by air.
Practical, model not builtLow riskDiffraction as a measuring tool: a CD, a laser and an X-ray diffraction analogue
A regular pattern too fine to see spreads light into a predictable pattern, so measuring the pattern reveals the spacing; this is the principle that let X-ray diffraction reveal the helical structure of DNA.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskRefraction to telescope: building a two-lens telescope
The laws of refraction that shape a lens also fix a telescope’s design: two converging lenses separated by the sum of their focal lengths magnify by the ratio of those lengths.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskTesting a sunscreen claim: how much UV gets through a thin layer?
An SPF is measured at a set thickness of sunscreen; a thinner layer lets through far more UV, so testing the claim shows why the amount applied matters as much as the number on the tube.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTesting the Doppler prediction with a swinging buzzer and a phone
A source moving toward a listener is heard at a higher frequency and moving away at a lower one; a swinging buzzer and a spectrum app turn Doppler’s prediction into a measured test.
Practical, model not builtMedium 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.