Division  

South Carolina Science Olympiad is excited to host a Division B state tournament for the thirty-ninth time since 1986! The Division B competition is open to teams of up to fifteen students ranging from sixth to ninth grade, with no more than five ninth graders on each team. We will host all 23 national events at the State Tournament, descriptions of which can be found below.

2025 SCSO Division B Event Slate

All event descriptions were taken from and can be found on the Science Olympiad, Inc., rules, linked below. This webpage also has learning and competition resources for each event! Events marked with an asterisk are shared with Division C and events highlighted in sky blue are new for the 2025 season.

The Science Olympiad rules manual is now available here courtesy of the national office!

Life, Personal and Social Science

• Anatomy and Physiology* - Participants will be assessed on their understanding of the anatomy and physiology for the integumentary, skeletal, and muscular systems of the human body.

• Disease Detectives* - Participants will use their investigative skills in the scientific study of disease, injury, health, and disability in populations or groups of people.

• Ecology* - Students will answer questions involving content knowledge and process skills in the area of ecology and adaptations in featured North American biomes.

• Entomology* - Students will be asked to identify insects and selected immature insects by order and family, answer questions about insects, and use or construct a dichotomous key.

• Microbe Mission* - Teams will answer questions, solve problems, and analyze data pertaining to microbes.

Earth and Space Science

• Dynamic Planet* - Participants will demonstrate an understanding of the processes involving the cryosphere of the Earth, with an emphasis on glaciers.

• Fossils* - Teams identify and classify fossils and demonstrate their knowledge of ancient life. Tasks will be related to interpretation of past environments and ecosystems, adaptations, evolutionary relationships, and the use of fossils in dating and correlating rock units.

• Meteorology - Participants will use scientific process skills involving qualitative and quantitative analyses to demonstrate an understanding of the factors that influence world climate and climate change through the interpretation of climatological data, graphs, charts, and images.

• Reach for the Stars - Participants will demonstrate an understanding of the late-stage stellar evolution and stellar remnants, and their observation across the electromagnetic spectrum.

• Road Scholar - Participants will interpret questions based on one or more state highway maps, USGS topographic maps (or portions thereof), Internet-generated maps, a road atlas, or satellite/aerial images.

Physical Science and Chemistry

• Air Trajectory* - Prior to the competition, teams will design, construct, and calibrate a single device capable of launching projectiles onto a target.

• Crime Busters - Given a scenario, a collection of evidence, and possible suspects, students will perform a series of tests. Test results along with other evidence will be used to solve a crime and answer questions.

• Optics* - Teams will participate in an activity involving positioning mirrors to direct a laser beam towards a target and complete a written test on the principles of geometric and physical optics.

• Potions and Poisons - This event is about chemical properties and effects of specified toxic and therapeutic chemical substances, with a focus on household and environmental toxins or poisons.

• Wind Power* - Teams construct a blade assembly device prior to the tournament that is designed to capture wind power and complete a written test on the principles of alternative energy.

Technology and Engineering

• Helicopter* - Prior to the tournament, teams will construct, collect data on test flights, analyze and optimize free flight rubber-powered helicopters to achieve maximum time aloft.

• Mission Possible - Prior to the competition, participants design, build, test, and document a Rube Goldberg®-like device that completes required Start and Final Actions through a series of specific actions.

• Scrambler - Teams design, build, and test a mechanical device, which uses the energy from a falling mass to transport an egg along a track as quickly as possible and stop as close to the center of a terminal barrier without breaking the egg.

• Tower* - Teams will design and build a tower structure meeting requirements specified in the rules to achieve the highest structural efficiency.

Inquiry and Nature of Science

• Codebusters* - Teams will cryptanalyze and decode encrypted messages using cryptanalysis techniques for historical and modern advanced ciphers.

• Experimental Design* - This event will determine the participants’ ability to design, conduct, and report the findings of an experiment entirely on-site.

• Metric Mastery - Teams will estimate and then measure properties of identical objects including mass, area, volume, density, force, distance, time, and temperature. Teams will also perform metric unit conversions.

• Write It Do It* - In this event, one participant will write a description of an object and how to build it. The other participant will attempt to construct the object from this description.