General Science

General Science merit badge requirements at discontinuation

1. Do TWO of the following:

   a. Chart the moon and one planet for four hours. Relate this to a position on the horizon

   b. Chart the position and appearance of the Moon on the days or nights you can see it for 28 days

   c. Chart the positions of three constellations and the North Star during 4 hours. Relate to a point on the horizon

   d. Watch the report on an eclipse of the moon, a meteor shower, or similar astronomical event

2. Describe your findings after checking TWO of the following:

   a. The erosion during a month's time of one of the following: A stream's banks, a tract of land from which the vegetation has been removed recently

   b. An exposure of a rock stratum or strata. (This could be at at a road cut, an excavation, or a natural canyon or river gorge).

   c. The appearance of three different kinds of clouds in the sky

   d. The environmental conditions which come before and during three different kinds of precipation

   e. The chances in the looks of three different kinds of rocks or minerals after being freshly broken and the newly exposed surfaces allowed to weather for a month

3. Describe what you learned after watching TWO of the following:

   a. The germination of three different kinds of seeds

   b. The metamorphosis of an insect

   c. The parts of one flower before and after pollination, and some time before the seeds are ripe

   d. The buds of five kinds of trees while dormant and after partial opening, either natural or forced

4. Build models or show the basic scientific principles or ideas the are applied in FIVE of the following:

   a. Using lenses to make a telescope or compound microscope

   b. Making a dry cell or other kind of electrical battery

   c. Extracting a metal from its ore

   d. Getting crystals from a solution of a substance

   e. Lifting something too heavy to lift directly

   f. Making a magnet that can be turned on and off

   g. Using materials that are more dense than water to build something that will float

   h. Shaping an airplane wing so it will lift a plane

   i. Changing back-and-forth motion to rotary motion

   j. Generating carbon dioxide so that some kinds of baked foods will rise

5. Design, carry out, and report on or show FIVE experiments that will:

   a. Show change in volume of salt water above and below freezing

   b. Show the the composition of the air in a bottle has changed when a bottle is placed over a burning candle until the candle goes out

   c. Show what happens when new seedlings are badly crowded in a pot of soil

   d. Show the effects of rusting tendency on an iron nail placed in a jar of water when different metals are wrapped around the nail

   e. Find out how the strength of an electromagnet is changed by the number of turns of wire and the current

   f. Show the effect of available water on the root development of seedlings

   g. Compare the orientation of a plant grown in complete darkness with one that was grown in light.