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
202 practicals
Mathematics · page 3 of 5
Slide, flip, turn: transformations with tracing paper and tessellations
A translation, a reflection or a rotation moves a shape without changing its size or angles, and shapes tessellate when the angles meeting at each point add to 360 degrees.
Practical, model not builtLow riskThousandths: decimals on a metre and a zooming number line
A millimetre is one thousandth of a metre, so decimals with three places are lengths on a metre rule and are ordered by looking at each place in turn.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTruncated axes: how a column graph can exaggerate a difference
When the vertical axis of a column graph starts above zero, the column heights no longer compare the values, so a small difference can look large, and redrawing from zero shows the true comparison.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTwo dice: why 7 comes up most
The sums of two dice are not equally likely because more pairs of faces make 7 than make 2 or 12, and many rolls show the counts settling towards those chances.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTwo strips and a split pin: quadrilaterals from their diagonals
Two strips pinned together act as the diagonals of a quadrilateral, and measuring the sides and angles of each shape they make, and folding it along its diagonals, shows which quadrilateral it is and which diagonals are lines of symmetry.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWhich nets fold into a cube
A net is a flat arrangement of faces that folds into an object, and only some arrangements of six squares fold into a cube.
PracticalLow riskWhich scales: choosing units and instruments for mass
Different scales read to different steps, so the unit and the instrument are chosen to suit the object, and grams, kilograms and tonnes convert by thousands.
PracticalLow riskA transversal on parallel lines: measuring the three angle relationships
When a transversal crosses parallel lines, corresponding angles are equal, alternate angles are equal and co-interior angles add to 180 degrees, and none of these hold when the lines are not parallel.
PracticalLow riskAngle sum of a triangle: torn corners on a straight line, checked with a protractor
The three interior angles of any triangle, placed together, make a straight angle, so they sum to 180 degrees whatever the triangle's shape.
PracticalLow riskDrawing pins: a chance experiment with no theoretical answer
When the outcomes of a trial are not equally likely, the only way to estimate a probability is from the relative frequency of many trials, and the estimate steadies as trials accumulate.
PracticalLow riskHand span of the class: mean, median, mode, range and the effect of one outlier
A continuous measurement collected from everyone in the room gives a distribution whose centre and spread can be summarised, and one extreme value moves the mean and the range while moving the median by at most half the gap between the two middle values.
Practical, model not builtLow riskInterlocking cube models: top, front and side views and isometric drawings
A solid built from cubes can be represented by its top, front and side views and by an isometric drawing, each of which shows some features and hides others, and outline views alone can fail to fix how many cubes a model contains.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMatchstick growing patterns: from a table of values to a linear rule
A growing row of squares adds the same number of sticks each time, so the count follows a rule of the form M = 3n + 1 that can be read from the structure, tabulated and plotted as points on a straight line that does not pass through the origin.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMeasuring pi: circumference divided by diameter for real round objects
For every circle the circumference is the same multiple of the diameter, and that multiple, measured with string and a ruler, comes out a little over 3.
PracticalLow riskParallelogram and triangle area by cutting and rearranging
A parallelogram cut along a perpendicular height and rearranged becomes a rectangle with the same base and height, so its area is base × height whatever its slant, and any triangle is half of the parallelogram made from two copies of it.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRates from timed walking: a distance-time graph from real data
Speed is a rate, distance per unit time, and it appears as the gradient of a distance-time graph drawn from stopwatch readings taken at measured marks.
Practical, model not builtLow riskReaction time from a falling ruler: a formula, a table of values and class data
The distance a ruler falls before it is caught converts to a reaction time through the formula t = sqrt(2d/g), and repeating the catch gives a data set whose centre and spread can be compared between people or conditions.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRolling one die: relative frequency settles towards one sixth
The relative frequency of a face on a fair die wanders in a short run and settles towards the theoretical probability of 1/6 as the number of rolls grows, and the complement (not a six) settles towards 5/6.
Practical, model not builtLow riskScale drawing of the classroom at 1:50
A ratio of 1:50 turns every measured length in the room into a drawn length one fiftieth as long, and every drawn length back into a real one by multiplying by 50.
PracticalLow riskSquare numbers and square roots with tiles
A number is a perfect square when its tiles form a square array, its square root is the side of that array, and a number with tiles left over has a square root between two whole numbers.
PracticalLow riskVolume of a rectangular prism: packing centicubes and filling with water
The volume of a prism is the number of unit cubes in one layer times the number of layers, and 1 cubic centimetre holds 1 millilitre, so a box measured in centimetres predicts the water it holds.
Practical, model not builtLow riskA dripping tap: measuring a rate and scaling it to litres per day and per year
A rate compares two quantities with different units, so a volume collected in a measured time gives millilitres per minute, which is the gradient of a straight volume-time graph and scales by unit conversion to litres per day and per year.
Practical, model not builtLow riskArea and perimeter of a composite outdoor space, measured with a tape and trundle wheel
The area of an irregular site is found by dissecting it into rectangles, triangles and trapeziums whose dimensions are measured; two different dissections must give the same total, and the perimeter is measured and computed separately because area and perimeter do not change together.
Practical, model not builtLow riskArea of a circle: cutting sectors into a near-rectangle
A circle cut into many equal sectors and laid alternately point up and point down forms a shape close to a rectangle with height r and base half the circumference, which is where A = πr² comes from.
PracticalLow riskPythagoras by measurement: squares on dotty paper and a 3-4-5 rope
The square on the hypotenuse has the same area as the two squares on the other sides, which can be counted on dotty paper and checked with a tape measure on a knotted rope that forms a right angle.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRandom samples from a known population: how sample size changes the spread of sample means
Samples drawn at random from the same population give different means, and the means of larger samples cluster more closely around the population mean, so the spread of the sample means shrinks as the sample size grows.
Practical, model not builtLow riskVolume of a cylinder: formula, measuring cylinder and displacement
The volume computed from πr²h agrees with the water a cylindrical container holds and with the water an equal solid displaces, tying a formula to two independent measurements.
PracticalLow riskBox plots of reaction time: dominant against non-dominant hand
A five-number summary and a box plot let two sets of measurements be compared on centre, spread, shape and outliers in one display.
Practical, model not builtLow riskBuffon's needle: estimating pi by dropping toothpicks on ruled lines
When toothpicks as long as the line spacing are scattered at random over ruled lines, the long-run proportion that cross a line is 2/π (Buffon's 1777 result, whose proof needs calculus and is taken as given here), so the relative frequency of crossings estimates 2/π and hence pi, and the estimate tightens as drops accumulate.
Practical, model not builtLow riskClimate Data Online: daily maximum temperatures for two months compared
A public data set of daily observations can be downloaded, summarised and displayed so that two distributions are compared on centre, spread, shape and outliers with the real numbers behind them.
PracticalLow riskCompass constructions: bisectors and an equilateral triangle, then measured
Constructions made with a compass and straight edge produce equal lengths and equal angles by design, and measuring the result with a ruler and protractor confirms the properties the construction guarantees.
PracticalLow riskEnlargement on grid paper: lengths scale by k, areas by k squared
An enlargement from a centre multiplies every length by the scale factor and every area by the square of it, and counting squares on the enlarged figure shows the square.
PracticalLow riskFifty coin tosses: real randomness has long runs
Genuine random sequences contain longer runs of the same outcome than people expect, so the length of the longest run separates real tosses from invented ones.
Practical, model not builtLow riskGalileo's ramp: a rolling ball's distance grows with the square of the time
A ball rolling from rest down a straight incline covers a distance proportional to the square of the elapsed time, so the distance-time graph is half a parabola, distance against time squared is a straight line, and the distances in successive equal intervals go 1 : 3 : 5 : 7.
Practical, model not builtLow riskGradient of a real ramp: rise over run with a spirit level, checked by angle
The gradient of a straight ramp is its vertical rise divided by its horizontal run, the same at every point along it, and it can be written as a ratio 1 : n, as a percentage and as an angle whose tangent is the gradient.
PracticalLow riskHeight and arm span: a scatterplot and a line of best fit by eye
Two measurements taken from each person form points whose pattern shows the direction, strength and linearity of their association, and a line of best fit drawn by eye lets one be predicted from the other, with predictions outside the measured range treated as less reliable.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHeight from shadows: similar triangles with a metre stick
At one moment the sun makes the same angle for every vertical object, so a metre stick and a tree with their shadows form similar triangles and the tree's height follows from one ratio.
PracticalLow riskHeight of a building with a clinometer: angle of elevation, distance and eye height
The tangent ratio turns a measured angle of elevation and a measured horizontal distance into a height that cannot be measured directly, and the error in the answer depends on how well the angle was read.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMeasurement error: the same desk with three instruments and what it does to the area
Every measurement is an estimate with an absolute error of half the smallest unit on the instrument for each reading, and those errors carry through into any area or volume computed from them.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSolar system to scale on the oval: scientific notation and a 5.75 billion to one scale
Dividing distances of hundreds of millions of kilometres by one scale factor turns them into paces on the oval, and writing both in scientific notation keeps the powers of ten under control.
Practical, model not builtLow riskStacking cups: a linear relationship with a measured gradient and intercept
The height of a stack of identical cups grows by the same amount for every cup added, so height against number of cups is a straight line whose gradient is the lip height and whose intercept is the cup body below the lip.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSum of two dice: 36 equally likely pairs, 11 unequal totals
A two-stage experiment has a sample space of ordered pairs; counting the pairs that give each total explains why 7 is the most frequent sum and 2 and 12 the rarest.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSurface area of a cylinder: peeling the label off a tin
The curved surface of a cylinder unrolls into a rectangle whose length is the circumference and whose height is the cylinder's height, so the surface area is 2πr² + 2πrh.
PracticalLow riskTwo draws from a bag: with and without replacement, tree diagram against 100 trials
Whether the first marble goes back changes the probabilities on the second branch of the tree, and the difference shows up in the relative frequencies of a hundred real draws.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWhich three measurements fix a triangle: congruence tests by construction
Triangles constructed from three sides, two sides and the included angle, two angles and a side, or a right angle with the hypotenuse and a side always match when overlaid, while three angles fix only the shape and two sides with a non-included angle can give two different triangles; the same tests explain why a diagonal splits a parallelogram into two congruent triangles.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWhy the trigonometric ratios are constant: measuring similar right-angled triangles
Right-angled triangles that share one acute angle are similar, so the ratio opposite over adjacent is the same for all of them, and that shared number is the tangent of the angle.
Practical, model not builtLow riskBouncing ball: rebound heights as an exponential decay
Each bounce returns a fixed fraction of the height it fell from, so successive rebound heights form a geometric sequence and the graph of height against bounce number is an exponential decay rather than a straight line.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCatch-up walkers: when and where two measured walks draw level
Two steady walks are two linear equations in time and distance, and the time and place at which the walkers draw level is their simultaneous solution, found algebraically or as the intersection of their graphs and then tested on the track.
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.