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
18 practicals
Physics · Atoms, radiation and the quantum
A dry-ice cloud chamber: seeing tracks of alpha particles and cosmic-ray muons
A charged particle ionises the supersaturated alcohol vapour along its path and makes a visible trail, whose thickness and length tell alpha, beta and muon tracks apart.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskAlpha, beta and gamma radiation: penetration and deflection with sealed sources
The three radiations differ in charge, mass and energy, so paper stops alpha, a few millimetres of aluminium stops beta, and gamma needs centimetres of lead.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalHigh riskCathode rays in Crookes tubes: Maltese cross, paddle wheel and magnetic deflection
Cathode rays travel in straight lines, carry momentum and are deflected by magnetic and electric fields as negative particles, the evidence that led to the electron.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalHigh riskCharged particles in a uniform electric field: deflection tube and projectile comparison
A uniform electric field gives a charged particle a constant acceleration, so its path between plates is a parabola like a projectile's, and the work done is q V.
Teacher-led practicalPractical, model not builtHigh riskDe Broglie matter waves: electron diffraction rings and the wavelength of an accelerated electron
Electrons passed through a crystal form diffraction rings whose size shrinks as the accelerating voltage rises, exactly as a wave of wavelength h over m v would.
Teacher-led practicalPractical, model not builtHigh riskHalf-life with dice and a decay simulation
Each unstable nucleus has a fixed chance of decaying per unit time, so a large sample loses a constant fraction in each half-life however many remain.
Practical, model not builtLow riskMass defect and binding energy: the deuteron from measured masses
A nucleus weighs less than its separated nucleons, and the missing mass times c squared is the energy that holds it together and the energy released when it forms.
Calculation and dataLow riskModelling a fission chain reaction with dominoes, mousetraps and a simulation
Each fission releases neutrons that can trigger further fissions, so the number of events per generation multiplies unless enough neutrons are absorbed or escape.
Practical, model not builtMedium riskModelling Millikan's oil drop experiment: quantised charge from blind mass measurements
Charges on oil drops come in whole multiples of one unit, found by balancing a drop's weight against an electric force and looking for the common factor in the results.
Practical, model not builtLow riskModelling the expanding Universe with elastic and markers, and Hubble's law from galaxy data
If space expands uniformly, every galaxy recedes from every other at a speed proportional to its distance, and 1 over the constant of proportionality, the Hubble time, is how long the expansion would have taken at today's rate.
Practical, model not builtLow riskRolling with Rutherford: finding a hidden target's size from marble scattering
Firing probes at an unseen target and counting deflections reveals the target's size, the reasoning that turned alpha-particle scattering into the nuclear atom.
Practical, model not builtLow riskSpectra from discharge tubes, an incandescent filament and reflected sunlight with a hand spectroscope (syllabus practical)
Hot dense sources give a continuous spectrum, low-pressure gases energised by an electric discharge give bright lines unique to each element, and the Sun shows dark absorption lines on a continuous background.
Teacher-led practicalPracticalMedium riskThe Balmer series: measuring hydrogen's visible lines with a diffraction grating
Hydrogen emits only certain wavelengths because its electron drops between fixed energy levels, and the Rydberg formula predicts every visible line.
Teacher-led practicalPractical, model not builtMedium riskThe Hertzsprung-Russell diagram from real star data, with spectral classes
Plotting luminosity against surface temperature sorts stars into a main sequence, giants and white dwarfs, and the position of a star reveals its size and its stage of life.
Calculation and dataLow riskThe photoelectric effect: stopping-voltage simulation and a bench estimate of Planck's constant from LEDs
Light delivers energy in packets proportional to frequency, so electrons leave a metal only above a threshold frequency and their maximum energy grows with frequency, not intensity.
Teacher-led practicalPractical, model not builtMedium riskModelling radioactive decay with dice and calculating a radiometric age
Decay is random for each atom yet exactly predictable for a large number, so the parent-to-daughter ratio in a mineral is a clock.
Practical, model not builtLow riskCounting background radiation: the irregular pattern of random decay
Radioactive decay is random, so counts in equal time intervals scatter irregularly, yet the scatter follows a Poisson distribution in which the variance equals the mean.
Practical, model not builtLow riskFinding a hidden target with rolling marbles: a model of Rutherford scattering
Like Rutherford’s team, the learner infers the size and shape of something unseen from how often and how projectiles are deflected, and the inference sharpens as the number of trials grows.
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.