Exploration Merit Badge

Requirements 6, 7 and 8 are one undertaking, not three

The badge says so itself, twice:

• Requirement 7(b): *"Use the steps listed in requirement 6 to guide your preparations."*
• Requirement 8(a): *"use the planning steps you learned in requirement 6 and the preparations you completed in requirement 7."* So this is plan → prepare → go, stated by number. Requirement 6 is not a warm-up discussion that happens to come sixth; it is the checklist the other two requirements run on.

Requirement 6's eight steps get used four times

Count where they turn up:

Objectives, agenda and permits, budget, equipment, communications and transport, safety and medical evacuation, team selection, recordkeeping. Eight items, four passes. Do requirement 6 properly and requirements 7 and 8 largely have a shape already; do it carelessly and you will be inventing it again under pressure.

You need two qualified adults, and neither is automatically your counselor

This catches people out, because the two supervision rules sit in two different requirements and use different words:

• Requirement 7(a): preparations happen under *a trained expedition leader, expedition planner, or other qualified adult experienced in exploration.* The requirement offers a school science teacher, a museum representative or a qualified instructor as examples.
• Requirement 8(a). The expedition itself happens under *your counselor or a counselor-approved qualified person.* Both also need your parent or guardian's permission, and requirement 7 needs your counselor's approval on top. Finding these people is part of the badge, and it is the part that is hardest to do at short notice.

Requirement 4: only one of the three keeps you out of the front of the room

Requirement 4 offers three ways to learn about real exploration, and they do not end the same way:

• 4(a), a living explorer. *"Share what you have learned with your counselor and unit."*
• 4(b): a real scientific expedition. *"Share what you have learned with your counselor and unit."*
• 4(c), laboratory exploration. "Explain to your counselor…", and no unit. If presenting to the troop is the part you would rather not do, 4(c) is the option that does not ask for it. If it is the part you want, the other two do.

Requirement 5 does not require you to travel

Both options say "either in person or via the internet". Visiting The Explorers Club or a research observatory is allowed to mean visiting its website. This is one of the few requirements on this badge that needs nothing arranged beyond permission and approval.

The report has a size limit in both directions

Requirement 8(c) is specific: at least one page and no more than three, and one of those pages may be photos, graphs or figures. It also lists what must be in it: objectives, findings and observations, photos, discoveries, problems or adverse events, and a conclusion. The conclusion is required whether or not you reached your objective.

What this page is

The Exploration merit badge, drawn so that the one long undertaking inside it is visible as one thing. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.