Division  

The SCSO Division C State Tournament will be held March 1, 2025, at Presbyterian College!

South Carolina Science Olympiad is excited to host a Division C state tournament for the fortieth time since 1985! The Division C competition is open to teams of up to fifteen students ranging from ninth to twelfth grade, with no more than seven twelfth 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 C 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 B 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, muscular, and skeletal 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* - Participants 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

  • Astronomy - Teams will demonstrate an understanding of stellar evolution, star formation, and exoplanets.

  • 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.

  • Geologic Mapping - Teams will demonstrate understanding in the construction and use of topographic maps, geologic maps, and cross sections, and their use in forming interpretations regarding subsurface structures and past depositional environments on Earth and other planetary bodies.

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.

  • Chemistry Lab - Teams will complete one or more tasks and answer a series of questions involving the science processes of chemistry focused in the areas of equilibrium and chemical reactions/stoichiometry.

  • Forensics - Given a scenario and some possible suspects, students will perform a series of tests. These tests, along with other evidence or test results, will be used to solve a crime.

  • Materials Science - Teams will build and bring one puck, complete lab activities, and answer a series of questions related to the materials science of ceramics with an emphasis on chemical and crystalline structure and behavior.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Electric Vehicle - Teams must design, build, and test one vehicle that uses electrical energy as its sole means of propulsion to travel as quickly as possible and stop close to a target point.

  • 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.

  • Robot Tour - Teams design, build, program, and test one robotic vehicle to navigate a track to reach a target at a set amount of time as accurately and efficiently as possible.

  • 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

  • Bungee Drop - Each team will design, construct, and calibrate a single elastic cord to conduct two separate drops at a given height(s) and attempt to get a drop mass, placed in a bottle, as close as possible to, but without touching, a landing surface.

  • 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.

  • 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.