Merit Badges

Pioneering Merit Badge

Nine requirements, and requirement 3 tells you its own prerequisites part by part, each of its three builds names the lashings and knots from requirement 2 that it needs. Requirement 9 is a full-size structure built by a group: spars, a site, a date, and the Guide to Safe Scouting height standards, which the requirements insist on twice.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Programming Merit Badge

Six requirements, and the fifth is three working programs in three different languages and three different development environments, with everything that decides whether a program passes stated once in the paragraph above the parts rather than in any of them. The three are chosen with the counselor's guidance, and "write or modify" allows modifying an existing program, which is a much smaller job than it first reads as.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Technology

Nature Merit Badge

Seven requirements, and the fourth is a choice of five fields from eight that decides how long the badge takes. Six are an afternoon of looking and identifying. Birds needs a month of records from a box or feeder you built, and Insects and Spiders can cost a season. Both prices sit two levels below the choice. Requirement 5 is written in the past tense about requirement 4, so Leave No Trace has to be read before the collecting starts, and the rules on collecting are numbered nowhere.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Photography Merit Badge

Eight requirements, and the one that shapes everything is requirement 7: it names requirements 4, 5 and 6 by number in order to forbid reusing their photographs. That makes this badge fifteen to nineteen distinct images rather than the handful it looks like, and the badge never says so. Requirement 7 also hides an approval in the middle, on the plan and before the shooting, and requirement 4 is simply requirement 2 demonstrated with a camera.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Safety

Music Merit Badge

Six requirements. A song or hymn your counselor chooses, sung or played; the five groups of instruments and how they make sound; TWO of four ways to explore music, one of them six months in a group or six solo performances; ONE of teaching songs, composing, or making an instrument; intellectual property and recorded music; and a career or a hobby.

Elective Merit Badges Arts Merit Badges Requirements

Nuclear Science Merit Badge

Eight requirements. Radiation and basic nuclear science are explained, with 3-D models of three isotopes. Then four choices: a visit to a scientist or a study of three accelerators; TWO of three classic experiments (electroscope, cloud chamber, half-life); ONE of three radiation safety activities; and a fission drawing with a mousetrap reactor or a visit to a reactor, followed by a discussion of nuclear electricity. Adults handle any radioactive materials.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Safety STEM

Oceanography Merit Badge

Nine requirements. Most are explanations: branches of oceanography, seawater, waves and rip currents, the sea floor (with a drawing), marine life and how scientists study the ocean. Requirement 7 is ONE of six projects, two of them time-bound: water temperatures four times daily for five days, or satellite images for three weeks. Requirement 8 is a book report, a visit report, or a five-minute speech to your troop with the outline approved first.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements STEM

Painting Merit Badge

Eight requirements. The long ones are 3, preparing and painting two different surfaces with patching or caulking, primers and topcoats (your counselor must preapprove the projects), and 4, an item painted in harmonizing colors chosen with the pamphlet's color wheel. The rest explain safety, coatings and finishes, equipment care (shown), ladders and protective equipment, and environmental and health issues. Requirement 8 is a career or a hobby.

Elective Merit Badges Arts Merit Badges Requirements Safety

Plumbing Merit Badge

Seven requirements. Health, local regulations and safety precautions for home repairs; drawings of the water supply and drainage systems of a house; five plumber's tools shown; plumbing terms; the kinds of pipe; then FOUR of seven hands-on tasks, each under the supervision of a knowledgeable adult; and a career in plumbing.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Safety STEM

Pottery Merit Badge

Eight requirements. Safety with a potter's tools, equipment and materials; clay bodies and potter's wheels; two drawings of pottery forms; sixteen pottery terms; then the making in requirement 5: slab, coil and pinch pots, a figurine or sculpture, a form thrown on the wheel, and loading and firing a kiln, every piece decorated by you. Then the ceramic industry, ONE of three ways to explore pottery, and a career.

Elective Merit Badges Arts Hobbies Merit Badges Requirements

Public Health Merit Badge

Eight requirements, mostly explanations of disease, immunization, vectors and pollution. Three take doing or arranging: a demonstration of two ways to make water safe to drink at camp; a visit to a wastewater or solid-waste facility or a food service facility; and a visit to a public health agency or a study of its website. Both visits need your parent or guardian's and counselor's approval first.

Elective Merit Badges Health Merit Badges Requirements

Lifesaving Merit Badge

Seventeen requirements with thirteen of them behind a gate, and half the gate is the Swimming merit badge, which has to be earned before most of this badge can begin.

Eagle-Required Merit Badges Eagle Required Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Kayaking Merit Badge

Eight requirements, and requirement 2 gates seven of them by name: the swimmer test stands in front of requirements 3 through 8, so requirement 1 is the only part you can start early. Requirement 6 needs a second boat; requirements 7 and 8 are solo.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Landscape Architecture Merit Badge

Five requirements, three of which need permission from somebody who does not know you yet: a landscape architect for the design plan in requirement 1, the appropriate authority for the site in requirement 4, and a counselor or nursery plus an audience for requirement 3. Requirement 4(b) asks where water stands for a longer period, which is not visible on a dry day, and requirement 4(a) tells you to copy your drawing twice before marking it, which is easy to read past and impossible to undo.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Teaching

Multisport Merit Badge

Eight requirements, and the fourth of them exists four times over: pick triathlon, duathlon, aquathlon or aquabike in requirement 3(d) and that answer decides requirement 4, requirement 5 and the race in requirement 7. Three of the four formats need the Swimming merit badge first; duathlon does not.

Elective Merit Badges Health Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Metalwork Merit Badge

Requirement 1 cannot be finished until requirement 5 has been chosen, and requirement 5 cannot be started until requirements 1 to 4 are done. Choose the option first, then work the badge. Four options with wildly different kit: Blacksmith alone needs a forge and an anvil, and is twice the size of the others.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements

Journalism Merit Badge

Requirement 2's Option A has a virtual-visit fallback if there is no newsroom near you and Option B has none, and requirement 4 makes you pick how you will cover an event that, read in order, you have already attended.

Elective Merit Badges Communication Merit Badges Requirements

Inventing Merit Badge

Nine requirements, two of which quietly need an overnight camping trip with your troop to have already happened: one wants a patent number from gear you have used, the other wants improvements to a product you have used, and they can very reasonably be the same item. The prototype at requirement 7 needs the counselor's approval first, stated in a note at the end of the requirement, and requirement 6 asks a Scout to talk to potential users before designing anything rather than after.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Technology

Mammal Study Merit Badge

Seven requirements, two of which are choices where the routes are nothing like equal: requirement 3 is 6 hours in the field, 15 hours across five days, or no field time at all, and requirement 4 offers seven routes from a book report to making study skins. Requirement 4(c) points back at requirement 3(c) by number, and requirement 5 is a project a counselor has to agree before it starts.

Elective Merit Badges Animals Conservation Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Mining in Society Merit Badge

Eight requirements, and the ten minerals chosen in the first five minutes are used again two parts later, when requirement 1(c) asks which countries they come from. Requirement 5 offers six routes and only one of them needs no permission, no travel and no host: four of the other five are visits, and five of the six need both a parent and the counselor to approve before you start. Requirement 2 needs a map of your state showing cities, highways, rivers and railroads that you are allowed to mark.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements

Model Design and Building Merit Badge

Six requirements, and the second one you read tells you to choose from the fourth: requirement 3 selects a subject from requirement 4, so the real decision happens a requirement before the options appear. The five scales differ by a factor of six and only one may be renegotiated, the printed book gets every metric conversion wrong, requirement 5 is a whole second model, and whether requirement 5 must actually be built is a question its own lettered parts do not answer.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Requirements Safety

Motorboating Merit Badge

Five requirements, and the swimmer test gates exactly one of them. Requirement 2(a) names requirement 5 and stops, so four-fifths of this badge is available before anybody gets wet. The lead time to watch is requirement 4(b): a state boating permit, where state law requires one.

Elective Merit Badges Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Insect Study Merit Badge

Nine requirements. The long parts are raising an insect from larva to adult (3(b)) and observing 20 live species from at least four orders (4(b)), which then become a scrapbook (4(c)) and a choice of eight species and their roles (4(d)). Requirement 5(b) is an ant colony or a bee hive, and 9 is a career. The rest are safety with ants and bees, anatomy, ecology, insects and people, and conservation.

Elective Merit Badges Animals Conservation Merit Badges Outdoors Requirements

Law Merit Badge

Eleven requirements, mostly explanations and discussions. Three need other people: five people asked about law enforcement, not more than one from your immediate family (4); a court session or a mock trial with a group (6); and a visit you arrange with a lawyer who works for a business, bank, title company or government agency (7). Requirements 2 and 11 are each two topics chosen from a list.

Elective Merit Badges Citizenship Merit Badges Requirements

Leatherwork Merit Badge

Five requirements. Requirement 1 is the hazards of leatherwork tools and materials, and first aid shown for injuries and illnesses from working with leather. Requirement 2 explains leather and its kinds. Requirement 3 is one or more leather articles using at least five of eight steps, and 4 is a braided or plaited article. Requirement 5 is ONE of: the commercial tanning process, tanning a small skin, caring for leather articles, or visiting a leather business.

Elective Merit Badges Arts Hobbies Merit Badges Requirements Safety