Inquiry events test the core skills that span every scientific discipline — designing experiments, communicating clearly, reasoning through problems, and working as a team under pressure. These events reward critical thinking and process over memorization.
Given a set of materials, teams will design, conduct, and write up an experiment within the time limit — identifying variables, forming a hypothesis, collecting and graphing data, and analyzing their results following the scientific method.
One teammate writes a detailed set of instructions describing how to build a structure from provided materials; the second teammate then uses only those written instructions to recreate the build — a test of clear technical communication and teamwork.
Teams decode encrypted messages using a variety of historical and modern ciphers — including Caesar, Atbash, Aristocrat, and Hill ciphers — and may be required to encrypt messages as well, racing against the clock for bonus points.
Teams design, build, and launch up to two rubber-band-powered rockets that each carry a ping-pong ball aloft and deploy a parachute, competing for the longest total time the rocket and parachute stay in the air.