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
30 practicals
Agriculture and food · Plant production
Mini greenhouse: designing a home for a salad crop
A sealed clear container keeps seeds warm and damp because water that evaporates condenses on the lid and runs back down, so a designed environment can supply what a food plant needs to germinate and grow.
PracticalLow riskSeed germination and abiotic factors: temperature, water and salt
Germination needs water and a suitable temperature but not light for many species, and each factor can be tested one at a time with a controlled comparison.
PracticalLow riskControl groups and blinding: a double-blind taste test with a binomial test
Blinding, random order and a probability calculation separate a real ability to tell two products apart from chance and from expectation.
Practical, model not builtLow riskReaction time from a falling ruler: reliability, sample size and outliers
One measurement of reaction time is unreliable; repeated trials and larger samples shrink the uncertainty of the mean, and each outlier has to be judged against a stated rule rather than deleted.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSample size and sample selection: drawing beads from a bag
Small samples scatter widely around the true proportion and the spread shrinks with the square root of sample size, while a biased way of choosing the sample misleads at every size.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSowing depth: when do wheat seedlings emerge
In a managed crop, sowing depth is a decision: a seed sown deeper must grow further on its stored food before reaching light, so it emerges later, which is why farmers set air seeders to a chosen depth.
PracticalMedium riskGerminating seeds at three temperatures, in light and in darkness
A seed needs water, oxygen and a suitable temperature to germinate but does not need light, so temperature changes the rate of germination far more than darkness does.
PracticalLow riskGrowing bean seedlings in light and in darkness
Seedlings in darkness still germinate but grow tall, pale and weak on their seed reserves, while seedlings in light stay short, turn green and keep gaining dry mass by photosynthesis.
PracticalLow riskMeasuring humidity with wet and dry bulb thermometers
Evaporation cools a wet thermometer bulb, and the difference between wet and dry bulb readings measures relative humidity, one of the growing conditions that affect plants and animals.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSoil in a jar: settling out sand, silt and clay
Soil particles of different sizes settle through water at different speeds, so a shaken soil sample separates into layers, coarse sand at the bottom and fine clay on top, and particle size is what separates this mixture.
PracticalMedium riskCounting stomata with leaf surface impressions
Stomata are the pores that let carbon dioxide in and water vapour out, and in most dicot leaves they are more numerous on the lower surface than the upper, while monocot leaves have them more evenly spread.
Practical, model not builtLow riskField soil texture by the bolus and ribbon test
How a moist ball of soil holds together and how long a ribbon it forms between thumb and finger estimates its clay content, and clay content controls how much water and nutrient a soil holds.
PracticalLow riskGermination test, thousand grain weight and the sowing rate
The mass of seed to sow per hectare depends on the target plant density, the seed size (thousand grain weight) and the fraction of seeds that germinate and establish, so a germination count changes the sowing rate.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMeasuring transpiration with a bubble potometer on a balance
Water evaporating from leaves pulls water up through the stem, so the rate a shoot takes up water rises with wind, warmth and light and falls in still, humid air.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRadish dry mass at five fertiliser levels
Plants make sugars by photosynthesis but need nitrogen from the soil to build proteins, phosphorus to build nucleic acids and ATP, and potassium for growth, so dry mass rises with nutrient supply until something else limits growth.
PracticalLow riskSalt tolerance of crops at germination
Salt in soil water makes it harder for seeds and roots to take up water, and crops differ in salt tolerance, which is why barley can be grown on land where faba beans fail.
PracticalLow riskSoil aggregate stability: the slaking and dispersion test
Soil crumbs that fall apart in water (slaking) or cloud it with clay (dispersion) have poor structural stability, which leads to surface crusting, slow infiltration and erosion.
PracticalLow riskSoil pH in water and in calcium chloride
Soil pH measured in 0.01 mol/L calcium chloride reads lower than in water because the salt releases acidity held on soil particles, and the calcium chloride figure is the standard used to decide on liming.
PracticalLow riskAsexual propagation: rooting cuttings with and without auxin
A stem cutting grows new roots and becomes a clone of its parent, and the auxin in rooting powder speeds root formation, which growers use to propagate plants true to type.
PracticalLow riskDesigning a fair plant trial: replication, randomisation and a test of significance
A difference between treatment means counts only when it is large compared with the variation between replicates, which replication and randomisation let the trial measure and a t-test judges.
Calculation and dataLow riskEffect of light on plant growth under shade cloth
Plant dry matter comes from photosynthesis, so plants under heavier shade gain less dry mass, even when they grow taller.
PracticalLow riskEthanol from sugar: following fermentation by mass loss
Yeast ferments glucose to ethanol and carbon dioxide in a fixed ratio, so the mass of carbon dioxide lost from a fermenting flask tells how much ethanol, a biofuel, has been made.
Practical, model not builtLow riskExtracting DNA from split peas
DNA, the material genetic engineering works on, can be released from plant cells with detergent, salt and a protein-digesting enzyme and seen as white strands when it precipitates in cold alcohol.
PracticalMedium riskGrowing-season rainfall and wheat yield potential
In southern Australia wheat yield is limited mainly by water, so the rain from April to October, plus some stored summer rain, sets an upper limit on yield that growers compare with what they harvest.
Practical, model not builtLow riskLegume root nodules: counting, cutting open and inoculation
Rhizobia bacteria in legume root nodules fix nitrogen from the air, and nodules that are fixing are pink to red inside, so inspecting nodules shows whether a legume is supplying its own nitrogen.
PracticalLow riskMeat chicken growth and feed conversion trial
Weighing meat chickens and their feed each week gives a growth curve and the feed conversion ratio, the kilograms of feed eaten for each kilogram of liveweight gained.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskMonocot and dicot seeds and seedlings: wheat and faba bean
A wheat grain (monocot) has one seed leaf inside the grain and sends up a sheathed shoot, while a faba bean (dicot) stores food in two large seed leaves, and the differences carry through to the roots and leaves of the crop.
PracticalLow riskPlanting density and yield per plant and per area
Plants in a crop compete for light, water and nutrients, so as density rises the yield of each plant falls while the yield per unit area rises and then levels off.
PracticalLow riskSoil bulk density, porosity and water content from intact cores
Bulk density is the dry mass of soil in a known volume; compaction raises it and shrinks the pore space that roots, air and water need.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSoil pH profile and the liming decision
Soil acidity changes with depth, so measuring pH in calcium chloride in the 0–10 cm and 10–20 cm layers shows whether a paddock needs maintenance or recovery liming before aluminium toxicity restricts roots.
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.