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
13 practicals
Mathematics · Trigonometry
Pythagoras by measurement: squares on dotty paper and a 3-4-5 rope
The square on the hypotenuse has the same area as the two squares on the other sides, which can be counted on dotty paper and checked with a tape measure on a knotted rope that forms a right angle.
Practical, model not builtLow riskEnlargement on grid paper: lengths scale by k, areas by k squared
An enlargement from a centre multiplies every length by the scale factor and every area by the square of it, and counting squares on the enlarged figure shows the square.
PracticalLow riskHeight from shadows: similar triangles with a metre stick
At one moment the sun makes the same angle for every vertical object, so a metre stick and a tree with their shadows form similar triangles and the tree's height follows from one ratio.
PracticalLow riskHeight of a building with a clinometer: angle of elevation, distance and eye height
The tangent ratio turns a measured angle of elevation and a measured horizontal distance into a height that cannot be measured directly, and the error in the answer depends on how well the angle was read.
Practical, model not builtLow riskWhy the trigonometric ratios are constant: measuring similar right-angled triangles
Right-angled triangles that share one acute angle are similar, so the ratio opposite over adjacent is the same for all of them, and that shared number is the tangent of the angle.
Practical, model not builtLow riskA 440 Hz tone on a phone oscilloscope: amplitude, period and transformations of sin x
A pure tone is a sine wave whose period is the reciprocal of its frequency, and changing volume, pitch or start time performs the dilations and translations the syllabus describes.
Practical, model not builtLow riskBeats from two close tones: a sum of sines rewritten as a product
Two tones a few hertz apart add to a tone whose loudness swells and fades, and the sum and difference expansions rewrite the sum as a product that predicts the beat rate exactly.
Practical, model not builtLow riskDistance to an inaccessible point by the sine rule
Two angles measured from the ends of a known baseline fix a triangle, and the sine rule turns that triangle into the width of a river or oval the learner never crosses.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskHeight of a flagpole with a phone clinometer and a tape
An angle of elevation and a measured distance fix the height of an object the learner cannot reach, and the sensitivity of tan to an angle error decides how carefully to measure.
Practical, model not builtLow riskHeight of a tower from two ground stations: trigonometry in three dimensions
Two vertical right triangles sharing the tower and a horizontal triangle on the ground fit together in three dimensions, so an elevation from one station and the ground distances predict the elevation at the other.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSun elevation from a shadow: inverse tan checked against Geoscience Australia
The ratio of a stick's height to its shadow passes through the inverse tangent to give the sun's elevation, and Geoscience Australia's calculator gives the same angle from astronomy.
Practical, model not builtLow riskTide heights from Bureau of Meteorology predictions modelled by a cosine curve
Tide predictions for a harbour rise and fall close to a cosine curve whose period, amplitude and centre line the learner reads from real data, and whose equation then predicts later high waters.
Practical, model not builtLow riskA vector walk: adding displacements on bearings
Two legs walked on bearings add as vectors, and the resultant displacement the learner tapes back to the start is the vector sum, not the sum of the leg lengths.
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.