Singapore Chemistry Olympiad (SChO) syllabus

The syllabus for the Singapore Chemistry Olympiad (SChO) encompasses advanced topics in General Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Physical Chemistry.

The primary objective of SChO is to evaluate students’ proficiency in understanding these concepts and their application in challenging or intricate scenarios. The specific syllabus for SChO may vary from year to year but generally includes the aforementioned areas.

Singapore Chemistry Olympiad (SChO) syllabus — Science Olympiad

General Chemistry:	Inorganic Chemistry:	Organic Chemistry	Physical Chemistry:
Atomic structure and periodicity	Chemical reactions and stoichiometry	Structure, nomenclature, and properties of organic compounds	Thermodynamics (laws, entropy, Gibbs free energy)
Chemical bonding and molecular structure	Redox reactions and electrochemistry	Functional groups and their reactions	Chemical equilibrium (equilibrium constant, Le Chatelier’s principle)
States of matter (gases, liquids, solids)	Chemical kinetics and equilibrium	Isomerism (structural, geometric, optical)	Electrochemistry (electrolysis, cell potentials)
Solutions and colloids	Coordination compounds	Organic synthesis and mechanisms	Kinetics (rate laws, reaction mechanisms)
Acids and bases	Transition metals and their compounds

Analytical Chemistry	Environmental Chemistry	Other Advanced Topics
Qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques	Pollution (air, water, soil)	Biochemistry (biomolecules, enzymes, metabolic pathways)
Chromatography (gas chromatography, liquid chromatography)	Green chemistry principles	Industrial chemistry (chemical processes and their applications)
Spectroscopy (UV-Vis, IR, NMR)	Environmental impact of chemical processes	Nanotechnology and materials chemistry

Preparation for SChO:

All participants must engage in rigorous studies beyond their regular school curriculum. Students typically refer to advanced textbooks to solve challenging questions and practice with past year’s SChO papers to become familiar with exam patterns and types of questions.

It is recommended for students to register for the SCO Olympiad to enhance their competitiveness among 400,000 students across 26 countries. Additionally, registration provides free access to over 100,000 practice questions for exam preparation.

Importance and Impact:

The SChO is a prestigious competition in the field of chemistry and it not only serves as a competition platform to identify and recognize talent and reward them with their merit, but also it brings a lot of excitement in participants with a variety of challenges and pushing students to their limit of the regular curriculum, preparing them with rigorous workshop.

SChO is a very popular competition, getting good scores in this exam opens the avenue of scholarships, and government support for higher education, also it allows students to participate in IChO – International Chemistry Olympiad to represent Singapore in the International Platform.