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
Biology · Disease and immunity
Microorganisms 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 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 riskAntimicrobial action of antibiotics, antiseptics and tea tree oil by disc diffusion
A substance that stops bacterial growth leaves a clear zone around the disc it soaks, and the zone's width compares treatments, including a plant extract used in Aboriginal medicine.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskHand hygiene: fluorescent lotion under ultraviolet light and fingertip plates
Washing removes microbes only from the surfaces it reaches, so a fluorescent stand-in for germs shows which parts of the hands a technique misses and fingertip plates show how far each treatment reduces the microbes that grow.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskKoch's postulates with blue mould rot of apples (Penicillium expansum)
A microbe is shown to cause a disease only when it is isolated from the diseased host, grown in pure culture, used to reproduce the same disease in a healthy host, and isolated again.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskMicrobial testing of water and food samples on nutrient agar
Microorganisms invisible in a water or food sample grow into countable colonies on a nutrient medium, so a plate count measures how contaminated a sample is.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskPasteur's swan-neck flask experiment with sterile nutrient broth
Sterile broth stays clear when air can reach it but dust cannot, and clouds only once airborne microbes get in, so microbes come from other microbes rather than arising from the broth itself.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskResponse of Australian native plants to Phytophthora dieback: a no-contact field survey
A soil-borne water mould kills the roots of susceptible native plants, and the pattern of dieback across a site, mapped without touching or moving soil, shows how the pathogen spreads and which plants respond by dying back.
PracticalMedium riskTracing the spread of an infection: the fluid-exchange epidemic with an indicator test
A hidden infection passed on by direct contact spreads through a group faster with every round of contact, and a record of who met whom lets the source be traced back, though never beyond the first pair.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskUltraviolet protection measured with UV-sensitive beads under sunscreens and fabric
Ultraviolet radiation, the main environmental cause of skin cancer, can be detected by beads that change colour, and the reduction in colour change under a sunscreen or fabric shows how much ultraviolet it screens out.
Practical, model not builtLow riskVitamin C in fruit juices by DCPIP titration: a nutritional disease investigation
Vitamin C decolourises the blue dye DCPIP in a fixed ratio, so the volume of dye a juice can decolourise measures its vitamin C, the nutrient whose lack causes scurvy.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWater treatments compared by plate counts: boiling, chlorination and filtering
Treatments that kill or remove microbes reduce the number of colonies a water sample can grow, and plate counts before and after measure how well each treatment works.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium 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.