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
Mathematics 11–12 · Mathematics · Calculus
Area of the school oval from an aerial photograph by the trapezoidal rule
Slicing an irregular region into strips and treating each as a trapezium gives an area estimate that improves as the strips narrow, which is the idea behind the definite integral.
Practical, model not builtLow riskAverage speed from 20 m splits: Bolt's 9.58 s and your own 100 m
The gradient of a chord on a distance-time graph is an average speed, and shrinking the interval turns it into the instantaneous speed the derivative describes.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCooling curve of a cup of hot water: Newton's law of cooling
The rate at which a hot drink cools is proportional to how far its temperature sits above the room, which gives an exponential approach to room temperature.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskFree fall on video: displacement, velocity and acceleration from frames
Velocity is the derivative of displacement and acceleration the derivative of velocity, and a dropped ball filmed at a known frame rate gives all three from real positions.
Practical, model not builtLow riskGradient of a tangent as the limit of secant gradients
The derivative at a point is the limit of the gradient of a chord as the second point slides towards the first, which the learner sees both on a drawn curve and in a table.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHow much rain falls on the school roof: area from a scaled aerial photo and V = Ah
A depth of rain spread over a measured area is a volume, so 1 mm of rain on 1 square metre is 1 litre, and a roof's yearly catch follows from its scaled area and the local rainfall record.
Practical, model not builtLow riskThe open box: cut squares from a sheet and find the largest volume
A cubic volume function built from a real sheet has a maximum that calculus locates and a measured fill of rice confirms.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTide heights from Bureau of Meteorology predictions modelled by a cosine curve
Tide predictions for a harbour rise and fall close to a cosine curve whose period, amplitude and centre line the learner reads from real data, and whose equation then predicts later high waters.
Practical, model not builtLow riskA lift ride: integrating measured acceleration to find speed and height
The area under an acceleration-time graph is the change in velocity and the area under the velocity-time graph is the change in height, which a phone in a lift measures directly.
Practical, model not builtLow riskDice decay: exponential decay and half-life with 100 dice
When every item has the same chance of being removed each round, the number left falls by a constant fraction per round and halves after a fixed number of rounds.
Practical, model not builtLow riskDraining a funnel: related rates and Torricelli's law
When water drains from a cone through a small hole, the depth falls at a rate linked to the volume rate by the chain rule, and the link changes as the surface shrinks.
Practical, model not builtLow riskFilling vessels at a steady rate: height-time graphs for a cylinder and a cone
The same steady inflow gives a straight height-time graph in a cylinder and a curved one in a cone, because the rate of rise depends on the surface area at the current height.
Practical, model not builtLow riskVolume of a flask, a horizontal pipe and a bottle neck, checked with water
The measured profile of a vessel decides the form of the integral that gives its volume: a straight taper needs a linear substitution, a circular cross-section needs a trigonometric substitution and the double-angle identity, and a hyperbolic taper needs a rational integrand, and water in a measuring cylinder settles whether the integration was right.
Practical, model not builtLow riskVolume of a rotated solid checked with water: a cone and a curved glass
Rotating a line or curve about an axis sweeps out a solid whose volume is the integral of pi y^2, and pouring water into the real object measures the same number.
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.