CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Physics and chemistry are the bane of many a high school student, but what if we're pitching the ideas to them too late? Can eight-year-olds absorb atomic theory? One teacher has asked that question in a bold experiment at a Brisbane primary school. And he says it shows young minds are much more advanced than we think. Matt Wordsworth reports.

MATT WORDSWORTH, REPORTER: Ithaca Creek State School is a typical primary school, but this is definitely not the usual fare for eight and nine-year-olds.

IAN STUART, FORMER HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER: And what do we call a substance that is made up of just one kind of atom? Yep?

STUDENT: An element.

IAN STUART: That's perfect.

MATT WORDSWORTH: For 25 years, Ian Stuart taught physics and chemistry to high school students, but it was a conversation with his young son that gave him an idea.

IAN STUART: My son, Tom, was asking me questions about science, and when I explained it he got it straight away. There was no barrier to him understanding the concepts as I explained, and I kept getting more and more complex, more and more abstract, and he absorbed it all.

ADRIAN QUINN, ITHACA CREEK STATE SCHOOL: Ian's son Tom was in my class, and Ian approached the school to try and introduce some of these concepts. So a number of the teachers at the school were willing to give it a go, and I was one of them, and basically it's just been this experiment that's rolled on from there.

MATT WORDSWORTH: The year three and four composite class at Ithaca Creek is now learning science usually reserved for years 10 and 11.

IAN STUART: What we've got here is an example of the lightest possible atom in the universe. Which, of course, is?

STUDENTS (in unison): Hydrogen!

IAN STUART: Hydrogen.

MATT WORDSWORTH: It's also as hands-on as possible. They don't just learn about the periodic table and how the elements are ordered by weight. They feel the difference between carbon, magnesium, silver and gold.

STUDENT: The gold is way heavier than silver if you've got an equal amount of them.

MATT WORDSWORTH: Ian Stuart even delves into the structure of the atom, introducing protons, neutrons and electrons.

IAN STUART: What are we going to do with lithium? Izzie?

IZZIE: We're going to put three protons in the nucleus.

IAN STUART: Exactly.

IZZIE: And then we're going to put... um, because the first shell can only hold two electrons, so we're going to put one electron on the second shelf.

IAN STUART: Number 10 on the periodic table, is it?

STUDENT: Yep.

IAN STUART: So what's it got?

MATT WORDSWORTH: Classroom teacher Adrian Quinn says he can see his students understand the abstract concepts, which is different to what's in their normal science lessons.

ADAM QUINN: From my perspective I've been impressed - and surprised, too. The kids have been really engaged, they've adapted to it well; their recall has been quite good - so you can introduce a concept and a few weeks later something will come up and I'll relate it back to that concept and you can see that the kids get that.

MATT WORDSWORTH: What's the kind of science that they're normally taught?

ADAM QUINN: It's the science about the real world but it's the world that they can see and touch and feel, and a lot of the science approach is procedural. So it's, "What's a fair test?" and "How do we assess what the human impact has been on something?" So it's things that they can see and touch, but it doesn't go down to... well, so if we're talking about water doing erosion, they'd never get to the concept of what actually is water.

MATT WORDSWORTH: Both teachers would like to see a formal research project to test what they've observed. And hope the science curriculum will change.

IAN STUART: It's thrilling that we're discovering that they're able to grasp much more than we thought they could. We can raise our expectations of kids.

MATT WORDSWORTH: What kind of building blocks do you think that you're laying here that will help the children later on?

ADAM QUINN: I think they're huge because these are fundamental concepts about how the universe is made up, and to know those sorts of things now then helps them with every step of their education.

MATT WORDSWORTH: Australia's chief scientist is supportive. He also points to a project in Western Australia where year six and seven students are being taught Einstein's theory of general relativity.

IAN CHUBB, CHIEF SCIENTIST FOR AUSTRALIA: The idea that we should stretch our students and really teach them contemporary science in interesting ways is a critical path to the future of science in this country. There are ample reports from all around the world that we've tended to teach science in a way that is very traditional, and in essence pretty old-fashioned.

MATT WORDSWORTH: The students at Ithaca Creek certainly are fans of the new approach.

STUDENT: Well, I usually think that science is really boring and, like, not fun, but when Mr Stuart came in and he started giving us all this stuff, I'm like, this is actually quite fun.

STUDENT II: We've made a molecule which has 10 hydrogens, five carbons - which are these - two oxygens and one nitrogen.

MATT WORDSWORTH: And what's it called?

STUDENT II: It's called gluta... glutamine.

MATT WORDSWORTH: Do you know that this is the kind of stuff that older kids learn?

STUDENT III: They do in grade 11 or 10 or something.

MATT WORDSWORTH: How does that make you feel?

STUDENT IV: Special.