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
Chemistry · Mixtures and solutions
Mixing and separating: sand, rice and paper clips
Materials can be mixed without changing what they are, and a mixture can be taken apart again using differences such as size and magnetism.
PracticalLow riskDissolving and getting it back: separating sand and salt
Dissolving is a reversible change: salt dissolved in water passes through a filter that stops sand and is recovered unchanged when the water evaporates, with its mass back on the balance.
PracticalLow riskAmmonia and hydrogen chloride diffusing along a tube: the white ring
Gases diffuse at speeds set by their particle mass, so two gases released at opposite ends of a tube meet nearer the heavier gas.
Teacher-led practicalPractical, model not builtHigh riskBrownian motion: smoke particles jostled by air molecules under a microscope
Invisible air molecules are moving fast and at random, because visible smoke specks they strike jiggle without any other cause.
PracticalLow riskCooling curve of stearic acid: temperature holds steady while a liquid freezes
During a change of state the temperature stays constant even though the substance keeps losing heat, because the energy goes into rearranging particles rather than slowing them.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskDensity of tap water and seawater from a mass-volume graph
Density is the mass of each millilitre of a substance, so the gradient of a mass-against-volume graph measures it, and dissolved salt packs more mass into the same volume.
PracticalLow riskDesign a separation: iron filings, sand, sawdust and salt
Each separation technique exploits one property difference, so a multi-part mixture needs a sequence of techniques chosen from the properties of its parts.
PracticalLow riskDiffusion in a liquid: ions meeting inside a single water drop
Dissolved particles spread through still water on their own; where the particles from two crystals meet they react to form a yellow solid, which marks the meeting point.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskGas particles move: carbon dioxide diffusing between two test tubes
Gas particles are in constant random motion, so a gas spreads into the space available even without stirring or wind.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHow much dissolves: a solubility curve for ammonium chloride
The mass of a solid that a fixed mass of water can hold in solution rises with temperature, and a saturated solution gives back crystals as it cools.
PracticalLow riskPaper chromatography of the dyes on coloured sweets
A colour that looks single can be a mixture of dyes, and they separate because each is carried up the paper by water to a different extent.
PracticalLow riskSeparating sand and salt by dissolving, filtering and evaporating
A mixture can be separated using a property in which its parts differ: salt dissolves in water and sand does not.
PracticalLow riskSimple distillation: recovering pure water from salt water
Boiling turns only the water into vapour, so condensing that vapour gives water without the dissolved salt.
PracticalMedium riskWater filter challenge: what filtering removes and what it cannot
A layered filter traps suspended particles by size, so muddy water comes out clearer, but dissolved substances pass straight through because their particles are far smaller than any gap in the filter.
PracticalLow riskWinnowing and yandying: separating seed from husk and sand
First Nations Australians separate seed from husk by winnowing (air carries off the lighter husk) and from sand by yandying (shaking a tilted dish sends small dense grains to the bottom), each technique exploiting a difference in density and particle size.
PracticalLow riskIron and sulfur: a mixture you can un-mix and a compound you cannot
Two elements mixed keep their own properties and can be separated, but once they react the compound formed has new properties and the elements can no longer be pulled apart physically.
PracticalMedium riskSeparating a sand, salt and water mixture and finding its percentage composition
A heterogeneous mixture is separated by physical properties (particle size, solubility, boiling point) and the recovered masses give the percentage composition by mass.
PracticalLow riskSimple distillation of salt water: boiling-point plateau and purity of the distillate
A homogeneous mixture is separated by boiling point: the thermometer reads a plateau at the boiling point of the volatile component while the dissolved solid stays behind.
PracticalMedium riskGravimetric analysis of the sulfate content of a lawn fertiliser or water sample as barium sulfate
Precipitating an ion completely as an insoluble compound of known formula, then drying and weighing it, gives the ion's mass in the original sample.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskIdentifying anions in solution: the eight syllabus anions by acid, silver, barium and iron(III) tests
Anions are identified by which cation precipitates them, the colour of the precipitate and whether it dissolves in acid or ammonia, with gas tests for carbonate and hydroxide.
PracticalMedium riskIdentifying the eight cations of the 2017 syllabus by flame and precipitation tests
Each cation gives a fixed pattern of flame colour, precipitate colour and solubility in excess reagent, so a short sequence of tests identifies which of the eight is present.
PracticalMedium riskPrecipitation titration of chloride in seawater with silver nitrate and a chromate indicator (Mohr method)
Silver ions precipitate chloride quantitatively, and the first excess of silver forms red-brown silver chromate, marking the end point so the chloride concentration can be found by titration.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskSolubility rules from mixing ionic solutions, and predicting precipitates from Ksp
Whether two ionic solutions give a precipitate follows a small set of solubility patterns, and quantitatively from comparing the ion product with the solubility product.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskPanning for gold: separating a dense mineral from sand by density
Alluvial gold is recovered because it is far denser than quartz sand (gold up to about twenty times the density of water, quartz sand 2.7, Earthlearningidea), so washing sorts the grains, the principle behind panning, jigs and sluices.
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.