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
Science 7–10 · Environment and sustainability
Brine shrimp hatching: the effect of salinity on an abiotic tolerance
An abiotic factor sets a range within which an organism can complete part of its life cycle, and hatching success falls outside that range.
PracticalLow riskAquifer in a tank: water table, wells and a leaking pollutant
Rain soaks into permeable layers and collects above impermeable ones; a well draws the water table down into a cone, and anything spilled at the surface follows the flow to the well.
PracticalLow riskPorosity and permeability of gravel, sand and clay
Porosity is how much water a sediment can hold and permeability is how fast it lets water through; both come from the size and packing of the grains, which is why an aquifer is sand or gravel and clay seals it.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCarbon dioxide into water: acidity, and why seawater resists it
Carbon dioxide dissolves in water and lowers its pH; water carrying dissolved hydrogencarbonate, as seawater does, resists the change, which is how the ocean takes up a large share of emitted carbon dioxide while slowly becoming less alkaline.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskCarbon locked in shells and limestone: carbonate and acid on a balance
Shells, coral and limestone store carbon as calcium carbonate; acid releases it as carbon dioxide, and the mass the flask loses on a balance measures how much carbon the sample held.
PracticalMedium riskReading the carbon dioxide record: Kennaook / Cape Grim and Mauna Loa
Two long records of carbon dioxide in clean air show the same accelerating rise, and a yearly wave from plant growth that is large at Mauna Loa in the northern hemisphere and small at Cape Grim in Tasmania.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSoil respiration: decomposers returning carbon to the air
Fungi and bacteria in moist soil respire the carbon in dead plant material back into carbon dioxide, so living soil gives carbon to the air while soil heated to kill its microbes gives far less.
PracticalMedium riskThe global carbon budget: where each year's emissions go
Each year's carbon from fossil fuels and land clearing is shared between the atmosphere, the ocean and land plants, so the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide equals emissions minus what the sinks take up.
Calculation and dataLow riskAlbedo: how ice, sand, soil and water take up sunlight
Light surfaces such as ice and snow reflect most sunlight while dark land and water absorb it, so when ice melts and exposes darker ground or sea, Earth absorbs more energy and warms further.
PracticalLow riskCold, salty water sinks: a tank model of the ocean's deep currents
Water that is colder or saltier is denser and sinks beneath lighter water, which drives the deep ocean circulation that carries heat around the globe.
PracticalLow riskEarth's energy balance: albedo, the greenhouse effect and surface temperature
Earth's temperature settles where the sunlight it absorbs equals the infrared it gives off; an atmosphere that absorbs and re-emits part of that infrared warms the surface from the 255 K of a bare planet to the observed 288 K.
Calculation and dataLow 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 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 practicalPracticalMedium 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 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 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.