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
36 practicals
Science 7–10 · Biology
Constructing a dichotomous key for ten school-ground plants
A useful key is built from observable, unambiguous structural characters, and separating n groups always takes n minus 1 couplets.
PracticalLow riskDuckweed population growth: exponential start, limited finish
A population with plenty of resources grows by a constant proportion each day, and growth slows as space or nutrients run out.
Practical, model not builtLow riskEutrophication 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 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 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 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 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 riskLeaf surface temperature: transpiration as evaporative cooling
Evaporation removes heat from the surface it leaves, so a transpiring leaf runs cooler than one whose stomata are sealed, the same physics that makes sweating cool skin.
PracticalLow riskMeasuring with a microscope: field of view, magnification and a scale bar
The width of the field of view is a known length at each objective, so the size of a cell can be estimated by counting how many fit across it.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPlant and animal cells: onion epidermis and cheek cells side by side
Plant cells have a wall and a regular shape while animal cells do not, and both have a nucleus and membrane visible after staining.
PracticalMedium riskPlasmolysis in red onion cells: the membrane pulls away from the wall and returns
The cell membrane controls what passes into and out of a plant cell while the cell wall keeps its shape: in a strong salt solution water passes out of the cell, so the membrane and the purple vacuole shrink away from the wall, and in pure water they swell back.
PracticalLow riskPondweed and light: oxygen bubbles against lamp distance
Photosynthesis in the chloroplasts of a water plant releases oxygen, and the rate of release falls as the lamp moves further away and less light reaches the plant.
Practical, model not builtLow riskPotato cylinders in sugar solutions: mass change across a concentration series
Plant cells take in water through the cell membrane from a dilute solution and lose it to a concentrated one, so potato cylinders gain mass in water and lose it in strong sugar solution, and one concentration in between gives no change.
PracticalLow riskSheep heart dissection: chambers, valves and the thickness of the walls
The structure of each part of the heart matches its job: the left ventricle wall is thickest because it pumps blood to the whole body, and one-way valves keep the flow in one direction.
PracticalMedium riskStomatal density: counting pores on the two faces of a leaf
Stomata are the pores through which a leaf exchanges gases and loses water, and their number per square millimetre can be measured from an impression and a calibrated field of view.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTesting a variegated leaf for starch: where photosynthesis happens
Starch is made only in the parts of a leaf that hold chloroplasts and have had light, so the iodine test maps where photosynthesis occurred.
PracticalMedium riskTranspiration with a straw potometer: water uptake against air movement
Water that evaporates from a shoot is replaced by water drawn up the stem, so the rise of the lower end of the water column in a narrow straw measures how fast the shoot takes up water, which closely tracks transpiration.
PracticalLow riskWater transport in celery: dye rising through the xylem
Water travels up a celery stalk through xylem vessels, and the rate depends on how fast the leaves lose water.
PracticalLow riskAsexual reproduction by cuttings: rooting success as an investigation
A piece of a plant can grow into a complete, genetically identical plant, and the conditions that favour rooting can be tested with a controlled comparison.
PracticalLow riskCauliflower cloning: tissue culture under aseptic conditions
A tiny piece of plant tissue on a sterile nutrient medium can regenerate a whole plant, because its cells keep the full set of instructions; micropropagation, the technology built on this, is used by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to clone endangered plants and in commercial crop propagation.
PracticalMedium riskFlower dissection: male and female parts and the ovules inside
A flower is a reproductive organ whose parts are arranged for pollen transfer and fertilisation, and its structure can be read from the outside in.
PracticalLow riskInvoluntary responses: the knee-jerk reflex and the pupil reflex
Some responses bypass conscious control: the knee-jerk kick follows the tap too fast to feel as a delay because the pathway runs through the spinal cord, and the iris adjusts the pupil to light without any decision being made.
PracticalLow riskMicroorganisms on hands: sealed agar plates before and after hand hygiene
Hands carry living microorganisms that grow into visible colonies on a nutrient surface, and hand hygiene reduces how many are transferred without sterilising the skin.
PracticalMedium riskPollen tube growth on a slide: watching the step before fertilisation
A pollen grain grows a tube toward the ovule when it lands on a suitable surface, and that growth can be watched and measured on a slide within a double lesson.
PracticalLow riskPulse and breathing rate before and after exercise: body systems responding together
When muscles work harder, the nervous system raises heart rate and breathing rate together, so the circulatory and respiratory systems deliver more oxygen and carry away the extra carbon dioxide the muscles produce; when exercise stops, both rates fall back toward resting over several minutes.
PracticalLow riskReaction time by the ruler drop: from catch distance to milliseconds
A response to a stimulus takes measurable time because the signal must travel from receptor to brain to muscle, and that time can be calculated from how far a ruler falls before it is caught.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTwo-point discrimination: mapping touch receptor density on the skin
Skin that carries more touch receptors per square centimetre can tell two nearby points apart, so the smallest gap felt as two points measures receptor density.
PracticalLow riskZones of inhibition: comparing antiseptics on a bacterial lawn
A substance that stops bacteria growing leaves a clear ring around a soaked disc on a lawn of bacteria, and the ring's diameter compares how effective each substance is.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskBeaks as tools: selective advantage in a changing environment
Small differences in a structure change how much food an individual can gather, and when food changes the trait that gathers more becomes more common in later generations.
Practical, model not builtLow riskChicken wing dissection: homologous bones in a wing and a human arm
A bird wing and a human arm are built on the same pattern of one bone, then two bones, then a group of small bones, although they do different jobs, which is anatomical evidence that tetrapods share a common ancestor.
PracticalMedium riskCoin-toss crosses: why a 3 to 1 ratio only appears in large numbers
Each parent passes one of two alleles at random, so a monohybrid cross between heterozygotes gives a 3 to 1 phenotype ratio on average but not in every small family.
Practical, model not builtLow riskExtracting 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 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 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 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 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 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.