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
35 practicals
Environment and sustainability · Weather and climate
Daily weather chart with symbols
Weather changes from day to day, and recording it with the same symbols each day reveals patterns that help people plan.
PracticalLow riskInvestigating the wind with a streamer
Wind is moving air that cannot be seen but can be measured by what it moves.
PracticalLow riskMaking and reading a rain gauge
Rain collects to the same depth in every straight-sided container, whatever the width of its opening, and that depth in millimetres is what a rainfall figure means.
PracticalLow riskA day of temperatures: morning, midday and afternoon readings
Air keeps warming for hours after the sun is highest, so three readings from one shaded spot show a rise from morning to mid-afternoon rather than a peak at noon.
PracticalLow riskA week of weather as symbols and a picture graph
Observations become data when they are recorded with agreed symbols, and a picture graph shows the pattern in one look.
PracticalLow riskCloud cover and rain: is a cloudier morning a wetter day
Patterns in weather records can be used to make predictions, and the class tests whether morning cloud cover is a sign of rain.
PracticalLow riskIs it hotter in the sun: thermometer readings in sun and shade
Air temperature changes through the day, and at the same moment a thermometer in sunshine reads higher than one in shade, which is why official air temperatures are measured in a shaded, ventilated screen.
PracticalLow riskWhere is it windiest: comparing wind across the school
Wind strength differs from place to place because buildings and trees block, slow or funnel moving air, and a simple instrument makes the difference measurable.
PracticalLow riskBuild a rain gauge and read rain in millimetres
Rainfall is measured as the depth of water that would cover flat ground, in millimetres, and a wide funnel feeding a narrow tube multiplies that depth so small falls can be read.
PracticalLow riskWhere does the water on a cold can come from? Finding the dew point
Air holds invisible water vapour, and when it touches a surface cold enough it condenses into drops, at a temperature called the dew point that a learner can measure with a can, ice and a thermometer.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCarbon dioxide into water: acidity, and why seawater resists it
Carbon dioxide dissolves in water and lowers its pH; water carrying dissolved hydrogencarbonate, as seawater does, resists the change, which is how the ocean takes up a large share of emitted carbon dioxide while slowly becoming less alkaline.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskCarbon locked in shells and limestone: carbonate and acid on a balance
Shells, coral and limestone store carbon as calcium carbonate; acid releases it as carbon dioxide, and the mass the flask loses on a balance measures how much carbon the sample held.
PracticalMedium riskReading the carbon dioxide record: Kennaook / Cape Grim and Mauna Loa
Two long records of carbon dioxide in clean air show the same accelerating rise, and a yearly wave from plant growth that is large at Mauna Loa in the northern hemisphere and small at Cape Grim in Tasmania.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSoil respiration: decomposers returning carbon to the air
Fungi and bacteria in moist soil respire the carbon in dead plant material back into carbon dioxide, so living soil gives carbon to the air while soil heated to kill its microbes gives far less.
PracticalMedium riskThe global carbon budget: where each year's emissions go
Each year's carbon from fossil fuels and land clearing is shared between the atmosphere, the ocean and land plants, so the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide equals emissions minus what the sinks take up.
Calculation and dataLow riskAlbedo: how ice, sand, soil and water take up sunlight
Light surfaces such as ice and snow reflect most sunlight while dark land and water absorb it, so when ice melts and exposes darker ground or sea, Earth absorbs more energy and warms further.
PracticalLow riskCold, salty water sinks: a tank model of the ocean's deep currents
Water that is colder or saltier is denser and sinks beneath lighter water, which drives the deep ocean circulation that carries heat around the globe.
PracticalLow riskEarth's energy balance: albedo, the greenhouse effect and surface temperature
Earth's temperature settles where the sunlight it absorbs equals the infrared it gives off; an atmosphere that absorbs and re-emits part of that infrared warms the surface from the 255 K of a bare planet to the observed 288 K.
Calculation and dataLow riskLand ice and sea ice: which one raises sea level
Floating ice already displaces its own mass of water, so melting sea ice barely changes sea level, while ice that melts on land adds new water to the ocean.
PracticalLow riskThe greenhouse bottle demonstration: testing a popular claim with an argon control
Two sealed bottles under a lamp, one holding carbon dioxide, usually give the result the greenhouse effect predicts, but Wagoner, Liu and Tobin (2010) showed that such a result can come from heat transfer rather than infrared absorption, and that argon, as dense but absorbing no infrared, is the control that separates the two, so the demonstration has to be evaluated rather than trusted.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskThermal expansion of water: a flask thermometer for sea-level rise
Water expands as it warms, so an ocean that absorbs heat takes up more room and sea level rises even before any ice melts.
Practical, model not builtLow riskAlbedo: how surface colour changes the energy absorbed and the temperature reached
A surface reflects a fraction of the sunlight it receives (its albedo) and absorbs the rest, so ice, forest, ocean and city roofs warm at different rates under the same Sun.
PracticalLow riskAngle of sunlight and energy received: the cosine law with a lamp and a light meter
The energy a surface receives per square metre falls with the cosine of the angle from the perpendicular, which is why latitude, season and axial tilt control climate.
Practical, model not builtLow riskConvection currents in a beaker (syllabus practical)
Heated fluid expands, becomes less dense and rises while cooler fluid sinks, the circulation that carries heat through the mantle, oceans and atmosphere.
PracticalMedium riskDensity-driven ocean currents: cold, salty water sinking under warm, fresh water
Temperature and salinity set seawater density, and density differences drive the deep circulation that moves heat between the poles and the tropics.
PracticalLow riskProperties of water that shape the Earth: heat capacity, density of ice, surface tension and solvent action
Water’s high heat capacity, expansion on freezing, surface tension and solvent power each follow from hydrogen bonding and each governs a large-scale Earth process.
PracticalMedium riskStick-slip on a brick: elastic energy storage and sudden release as an earthquake model
Rock across a locked fault stores elastic potential energy until friction fails, and the sudden slip releases that energy as seismic waves.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWhat drives the plates: a pupil model of slab pull, ridge push and mantle drag
A cold, dense slab sinking at a subduction zone pulls the rest of the plate after it, and plate speeds show that this pull matters more than ridge push or mantle drag.
PracticalLow riskFloating ice against land ice: which raises sea level when it melts
Floating ice already displaces its own mass of water, so in fresh water its melting does not change the level, whereas ice resting on land adds new water to the ocean.
PracticalLow riskMilankovitch cycles by hand: modelling eccentricity, tilt and precession
Slow changes in the Earth’s orbit and axis redistribute sunlight between seasons and hemispheres over tens of thousands of years, pacing the ice ages.
PracticalLow riskOcean acidification: carbon dioxide lowering the pH of water and attacking carbonate shells
Carbon dioxide dissolving in water forms carbonic acid, which lowers pH and dissolves calcium carbonate, the chemistry that threatens shell-building marine life.
Practical, model not builtLow riskThe greenhouse effect in a bottle, and why the bottle model needs care
Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation and warms the air, but a bottle mostly measures trapped convection, so the practical teaches both the effect and the limits of a physical model.
PracticalLow riskThermal expansion of water: measuring the rise in a flask and scaling to sea level
Warmer water occupies more volume, so a warming ocean rises even before any ice melts, and the effect is measurable in a flask with a narrow tube.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTree rings as climate records: counting, measuring and cross-dating
A tree adds one ring a year whose width follows the growing conditions, so ring sequences from overlapping trees give a dated record of past climate.
PracticalLow riskTesting trend models for carbon dioxide on Cape Grim data
Different mathematical models can fit the same past data almost equally well yet predict differently, so a model is judged by how well it predicts data it was not fitted to.
Calculation and dataLow 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.