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
12 practicals
Science and Technology K–6 · Earth and space · Earth in space: day, seasons, Moon
Day and night with a globe and a torch
Day and night are an observable change in the sky, and a globe turned beside a lamp models what causes them: Earth is a ball that turns once a day, so the side facing the sun has day while the other side has night.
PracticalLow riskMoon diary: recording the moon's shape for a month
The moon's lit shape changes in a cycle of about a month, growing from new to full and shrinking back.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSeasons: keeping a term-long record of daylight and temperature
Days get longer and warmer or shorter and cooler through the year in a pattern that repeats, and the change can be measured week by week.
Practical, model not builtLow riskShadow stick: tracking the sun's path across a day
The sun's position changes through the day in a repeating pattern: shadows are long in the morning, shortest near midday and point the other way in the afternoon.
Practical, model not builtLow riskStar patterns: finding the Southern Cross with a star wheel
Stars form patterns that keep their shape while the whole sky turns through the night and shifts through the year.
PracticalLow riskEarth's place in the solar system: a playground model of the planets
Earth is one of eight planets orbiting the Sun, and the planets are not spread evenly: the four rocky planets stand within the first two and a half metres of a scale model while the four giants take up the rest of the oval.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMoon phases with a ball and a lamp
Half the Moon is lit by the Sun at all times, and a phase is how much of that lit half faces Earth, which changes through a repeating cycle of about 29.5 days.
Practical, model not builtLow riskShadow stick: tracking the Sun across a school day
A shadow forms where an object stops light travelling in straight lines from the Sun, so the length and direction of a stick's shadow record the Sun's height and position through the day and the year.
Practical, model not builtLow riskGlobe and lamp: why winter days are shorter
Earth spins on an axis tilted 23.4 degrees from the perpendicular to its orbit, so the axis itself stands 66.6 degrees from the plane of the orbit, and it keeps pointing the same way in space, so as Earth goes round the Sun each hemisphere spends more or less of each turn in sunlight, giving long summer days and short winter days.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMeasuring the Earth with two shadows: an Eratosthenes experiment between two schools
Because Earth is a sphere, the noon Sun stands at different heights at places north and south of each other, and the difference in angle together with the distance between them gives Earth's circumference, a measurement that needs two groups working together.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTorch on graph paper: why low winter sunshine heats less
A beam of sunlight arriving at a low angle spreads over a larger area of ground, so each square metre receives less energy; together with shorter days this, not Earth's distance from the Sun, makes winter colder than summer.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWalking the solar system: a scale model on the school grounds
The planets orbit the Sun at vast and very unequal distances, and a planet farther out takes longer to complete one orbit, which a model built at one scale for both distance and size makes visible.
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.