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
25 practicals
Earth and space · Earth in space: day, seasons, Moon
Day and night with a globe and a torch
Day and night are an observable change in the sky, and a globe turned beside a lamp models what causes them: Earth is a ball that turns once a day, so the side facing the sun has day while the other side has night.
PracticalLow riskMoon diary: recording the moon's shape for a month
The moon's lit shape changes in a cycle of about a month, growing from new to full and shrinking back.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSeasons: keeping a term-long record of daylight and temperature
Days get longer and warmer or shorter and cooler through the year in a pattern that repeats, and the change can be measured week by week.
Practical, model not builtLow riskShadow stick: tracking the sun's path across a day
The sun's position changes through the day in a repeating pattern: shadows are long in the morning, shortest near midday and point the other way in the afternoon.
Practical, model not builtLow riskStar patterns: finding the Southern Cross with a star wheel
Stars form patterns that keep their shape while the whole sky turns through the night and shifts through the year.
PracticalLow riskEarth's place in the solar system: a playground model of the planets
Earth is one of eight planets orbiting the Sun, and the planets are not spread evenly: the four rocky planets stand within the first two and a half metres of a scale model while the four giants take up the rest of the oval.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMoon phases with a ball and a lamp
Half the Moon is lit by the Sun at all times, and a phase is how much of that lit half faces Earth, which changes through a repeating cycle of about 29.5 days.
Practical, model not builtLow riskShadow stick: tracking the Sun across a school day
A shadow forms where an object stops light travelling in straight lines from the Sun, so the length and direction of a stick's shadow record the Sun's height and position through the day and the year.
Practical, model not builtLow riskGlobe and lamp: why winter days are shorter
Earth spins on an axis tilted 23.4 degrees from the perpendicular to its orbit, so the axis itself stands 66.6 degrees from the plane of the orbit, and it keeps pointing the same way in space, so as Earth goes round the Sun each hemisphere spends more or less of each turn in sunlight, giving long summer days and short winter days.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMeasuring the Earth with two shadows: an Eratosthenes experiment between two schools
Because Earth is a sphere, the noon Sun stands at different heights at places north and south of each other, and the difference in angle together with the distance between them gives Earth's circumference, a measurement that needs two groups working together.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTorch on graph paper: why low winter sunshine heats less
A beam of sunlight arriving at a low angle spreads over a larger area of ground, so each square metre receives less energy; together with shorter days this, not Earth's distance from the Sun, makes winter colder than summer.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWalking the solar system: a scale model on the school grounds
The planets orbit the Sun at vast and very unequal distances, and a planet farther out takes longer to complete one orbit, which a model built at one scale for both distance and size makes visible.
Practical, model not builtLow riskA month of Moon observations
Recording the Moon's shape, direction and time each day reveals the 29.5 day cycle and the Moon rising about 50 minutes later each day, the same lag that moves the tides later each day.
PracticalLow riskEratosthenes: measuring Earth's circumference with a partner school
Two noon shadows at different latitudes on the same day give the angle between the two sites, and the north-south distance between them scaled by 360 degrees over that angle gives Earth's circumference.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMoon phases with a ball on a stick
Half the Moon is always sunlit; the phase is the part of that lit half that faces Earth, set by the angle between Sun, Earth and Moon.
Practical, model not builtLow riskShadow stick: tracking the Sun across a school day
Earth's rotation carries the Sun across the sky, so a vertical stick's shadow swings and shortens to a minimum at solar noon, which is not 12:00 by the clock; the length of that noon shadow changes with the seasons because Earth's tilted axis changes the Sun's noon height.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSolar and lunar eclipses: shadows of a ball and a globe
An eclipse needs the Sun, Earth and Moon in a straight line; the Moon's tilted orbit keeps its shadow above or below Earth on most months, and the shadow's cone length decides whether a solar eclipse is total or annular.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSolar system to scale on the oval
At one scale the planets are specks metres to hundreds of metres apart, which no textbook diagram can show without breaking the scale.
Practical, model not builtLow riskStars return about 4 minutes earlier each night: the sidereal day and the Emu in the Sky
Because Earth moves along its orbit, a star comes back to the same place in the sky 3 minutes 56 seconds earlier each night, so the evening sky shifts through the year, a cycle that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have long used as a calendar.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSun angle and energy per square metre: a torch on graph paper
The same beam spread over a larger patch delivers less energy to each square metre, which is why a low winter Sun warms the ground less than a high summer Sun.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTides at Fort Denison: reading the Moon in the tide table
The Moon's and Sun's gravity raise two tidal bulges, so a coast sees two highs and two lows in a lunar day of 24 h 50 min, and the highs are largest when Sun and Moon line up at new and full Moon.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTilted globe around a lamp: seasons and day length
Earth's axis keeps pointing the same way in space as it orbits, so each hemisphere leans toward the Sun for half the year and away for the other half, changing noon Sun height and day length together.
Practical, model not builtLow riskA scale model of the solar system on the school oval
Built to one scale for both sizes and distances, the solar system is specks separated by enormous gaps, something no page diagram can show.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTesting the assumption that the Sun rises in the east
The Sun rises due east only at the equinoxes; on other dates the rising point swings north or south by an amount set by latitude and the Sun’s declination.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMeasuring the Earth with two shadows, the Eratosthenes method
Two shadow angles measured at local noon at places a known north–south distance apart give the Earth’s circumference by geometry, the method Eratosthenes chose because the Earth could not be measured directly.
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.