Division  

The SCSO Division C State Tournament will be held February 28, 2026, at Presbyterian College!

South Carolina Science Olympiad is excited to host a Division C state tournament for the forty-first 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.

2026 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 2026 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 nervous, special senses, and endocrine systems of the human body.

  • Designer Genes - Teams will answer questions, solve problems, and analyze data pertaining to classic, evolutionary, and molecular genetics.

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

  • Entomology* - Students will be asked to identify insects and selected immature insects by indicated taxonomic order and family, answer questions about insects, and use or construct a dichotomous key. All insects will be representatives of insects found in North America, north of Mexico.

  • Water Quality* - Participants will be assessed on their understanding and evaluation of freshwater aquatic environments.

Earth and Space Science

  • Astronomy - Teams will demonstrate an understanding of stellar evolution, from formation to destruction.

  • Dynamic Planet* - Teams will complete tasks related to physical and geological oceanography.

  • Remote Sensing* - Participants will use remote sensing imagery, data, and computational process skills to complete tasks related to climate change.

  • Rocks and Minerals* - Teams will identify and classify rocks and minerals and demonstrate knowledge of how rocks and minerals help to understand geological processes, interpretation of Earth’s history, the development of natural resources, and use by society.

Physical Science and Chemistry

  • 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.

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

  • 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.

  • Hovercraft* - Prior to the competition, participants will design, construct, and calibrate a self-propelled air-levitated vehicle that moves down a track.

  • Machines* - Teams will complete a written test on simple and compound machine concepts and construct a lever-based measuring device prior to the tournament to determine the mass ratios between three test masses.

  • Materials Science - Teams will complete lab activities and answer a series of questions related to the materials science of nanomaterials with an emphasis on chemical, physical, optical, and mechanical properties of nanomaterials.

Technology and Engineering

  • Boomilever* - Teams will design and build a cantilevered beam or truss structure that extends from a vertical testing wall and supports a load at a specified distance from the testing wall. The structure must meet the requirements specified in these rules to achieve the highest score, which is a combination of structural efficiency and load scored bonus.

  • 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.

Inquiry and Nature of Science

  • Bungee Drop - Each team will design one single elastic cord to conduct drops at a given height(s) and attempt to get a weighted 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.

  • Engineering CAD - Teams will read a set of engineering drawings and collaborate to CAD parts in Onshape and then incorporate these parts with provided components to create an assembly.

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