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
24 practicals
Biology · Genetics and evolution
Camouflage hunt: which colour survives on the grass?
Colour that matches the habitat is a survival feature, and counting which coloured items a class of predators finds first turns camouflage into data.
PracticalLow riskAsexual reproduction by cuttings: rooting success as an investigation
A piece of a plant can grow into a complete, genetically identical plant, and the conditions that favour rooting can be tested with a controlled comparison.
PracticalLow riskCauliflower cloning: tissue culture under aseptic conditions
A tiny piece of plant tissue on a sterile nutrient medium can regenerate a whole plant, because its cells keep the full set of instructions; micropropagation, the technology built on this, is used by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to clone endangered plants and in commercial crop propagation.
PracticalMedium riskBeaks as tools: selective advantage in a changing environment
Small differences in a structure change how much food an individual can gather, and when food changes the trait that gathers more becomes more common in later generations.
Practical, model not builtLow riskChicken wing dissection: homologous bones in a wing and a human arm
A bird wing and a human arm are built on the same pattern of one bone, then two bones, then a group of small bones, although they do different jobs, which is anatomical evidence that tetrapods share a common ancestor.
PracticalMedium riskCoin-toss crosses: why a 3 to 1 ratio only appears in large numbers
Each parent passes one of two alleles at random, so a monohybrid cross between heterozygotes gives a 3 to 1 phenotype ratio on average but not in every small family.
Practical, model not builtLow riskExtracting DNA from a banana or an onion
DNA is a physical substance present in every cell, and it can be released by breaking membranes and made visible by precipitating it in cold alcohol.
PracticalLow riskModelling meiosis with model chromosomes: independent assortment and gamete variety
Meiosis halves the chromosome number and, because each homologous pair lines up independently of the others, one parent can make 2 to the power n different gametes from n chromosome pairs before crossing over is counted.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRoot tip squash: seeing mitosis and counting a mitotic index
New cells arise by mitosis in growing regions, and the fraction of cells caught dividing at any moment can be counted from a stained squash.
PracticalMedium riskSooty selection: camouflage, predation and allele frequencies over generations
Predators remove the individuals they can see, so the colour that matches the background rises in frequency generation by generation, and the direction reverses when the background changes.
Practical, model not builtLow riskVariation in the class: continuous measurements and the myth of single-gene traits
Most human traits vary continuously and depend on many genes and the environment, so class data for tongue rolling or earlobe shape do not fit a single dominant and recessive allele.
Practical, model not builtLow riskNatural selection by predation: coloured rice with a one-locus selection model
When a predator finds one colour more easily than another, the proportion of the harder-to-see colour rises generation by generation; the same logic in allele terms gives a predictable change in frequency.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRadiometric dating: dice decay and an age calculator from parent and daughter counts
Each unstable atom has a fixed chance of decaying in a given time, so a large sample halves at a constant interval and the ratio of parent to daughter atoms gives the age of a fossil or rock.
Practical, model not builtLow riskAsexual reproduction and whole-plant cloning from stem cuttings
A stem cutting regrows roots and becomes a genetically identical plant, which is asexual reproduction put to use as cloning.
PracticalLow riskCloning cauliflower by tissue culture on sterile medium
A few plant cells on a sterile nutrient medium can regrow a whole plant because plant cells keep the capacity to form any tissue, which is the basis of micropropagation.
PracticalMedium riskCoin-toss crosses: predicted ratios, sampling scatter and the chi-squared test
A Punnett square predicts a ratio, but real offspring counts scatter around it, and a chi-squared test decides whether the scatter is more than chance.
Practical, model not builtLow riskExtracting DNA from split peas or onion
Breaking cells with detergent, stripping proteins with a protease and adding cold ethanol pulls the long DNA molecules out of solution as a visible mass.
PracticalMedium riskFlower dissection and hand pollination of rapid-cycling brassicas
A flower's parts are organised for pollen transfer and fertilisation, and moving pollen by hand between chosen parents is the basis of artificial pollination in plant breeding.
PracticalLow riskFrequency of PTC tasting in a class and the allele frequencies it implies
PTC tasting is often treated as a trait with dominant inheritance, and under that simplification the fraction of non-tasters gives the recessive allele frequency by Hardy-Weinberg; the University of Utah page cautions that tasters vary greatly in sensitivity and that the PTC gene has about 85 percent of the influence, so the figure is an estimate under a simple model.
Practical, model not builtLow riskGel electrophoresis of food dyes and a size calculator for DNA fragments
Charged molecules travel through a gel at speeds set by size and charge, and a ladder of known sizes calibrates the gel. Food dyes stand in for DNA fragments: the gel shows the separation step that DNA profiling depends on, without running any DNA and without reading an inheritance pattern.
Teacher-led practicalPractical, model not builtMedium riskMitosis in an onion root tip squash and the mitotic index
Growing root tips are full of dividing cells, and a stained squash shows every stage of mitosis at once so the fraction of cells dividing can be counted.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskModelling DNA replication and the Meselson-Stahl test of three models
Each strand of a DNA molecule is a template for a new complementary strand, so every daughter molecule keeps one old strand, and the pattern of heavy and light DNA across generations distinguishes this semi-conservative model from its rivals.
Practical, model not builtLow riskModelling meiosis, crossing over and fertilisation with Reebop chromosomes
Independent assortment, crossing over and random fertilisation together give each offspring a genotype that no sibling need share, and a physical model makes each source of variation countable.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMendel’s law of dominance: his counts, a bead model and a chi-square test
Mendel’s law of dominance predicts a 3 : 1 ratio in the second generation; his own counts and a bead model test whether departures from 3 : 1 are within chance.
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.