Rock-It Science, Santa Clara:
Rock-it Science is based in Santa Clara which is in the heart of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Rock-it Science provides project-oriented science programs that are creative, challenging, and fun! In a Rock-it Science session, children experience cooperative learning and playful science activities. The instructors utilize storytelling and innovative science experiments to capture the children's attention and imagination.
Email: Contact us here ( or request a callback )
Summer Camps
2009 Summer Camp Schedule
Times: All camps are half-day Mon-Fri, from 9:00-12:00 OR 
from 1:30-4:30. For your convenience, each camp is offered four times during the summer.
Age Group: The age group for all programs is 5 - 11. All students will be together for the introduction and story part of the lesson, but for most of the experiments they will be split into two groups by age.
Location: Programs are held in our laboratory/classroom at Rock-It Science, 2110 Walsh Ave., Ste. F., Santa Clara, CA 95050.
For further information on the summer science camp programs available, including dates and fees, please contact us by completing the form on our Contact Page.
Build It and Keep It (Science projects to take home)
Each day we will select two or three experiments from the following list, depending on weather and ability of the students. We reserve the right to change the subjects as necessary to meet the needs of the children. The age group for all programs is 5 - 11. All students will be together for the introduction and story part of the lesson, but for most of the experiments they will be split into two groups by age.
•Sound Effects: Discover how to amplify very small sounds into incredibly loud sounds without using any electricity.
•Echoes: Create loud echoes and waves of all sorts with a slinky spring and two cups.
•Glove Bagpipes: I bet parents really hate this one! A latex glove carefully placed on a tube and inflated can create the most marvelously loud foghorn sound.
•Mirror Masks: You can see out but they cannot see in!
•Marshmallow Cannons: Shoot marshmallows around corners!
•Catapults: Build a catapult and use it to launch stuff all over the lab.
•Spin Art: Spin white cardboard with an electric motor and then see what happens when you put ink on it!
•Foam Cutters: Make a 3-D puzzle out of styrofoam and challenge your parents to put it together.
•Shrinky Dinks: An artistic way to recycle those plastic containers.
•Hovercraft: Make hovercrafts and race them down an inclined plane. Fly a leaf-blower-powered hovercraft in the paved area.
•Loop-de-loop Flyers: Make an aircraft and try flying it by hand. Then add weight to balance it and a rubber band launcher to make it fly high and do barrel rolls in the sky.
•Flying Propellers: Experiment with the propellers and methods of spinning these folk toys to see how
high they fly.
•Windmills: Make a windmill and discover how much wind is necessary to lift a water balloon to the top.
•Speakers: Make an ordinary plastic cup talk and sing with magnets and wire.
•Squirt Guns: Make a water pump and then discover which nozzle will squirt the furthest.
•Bouncing Goo: Yes, there is nothing like gooey, slimy, and stretchy stuff!
•Gyro on a String: It spins, it whistles, and it doesn't always do what you want it to!
•Tops: Make tops that flip over, create colors, and zoom across the floor sideways.
•Magnetic Creatures: Create a colorful alien that moves at your command.
Frankenstein's Lab (Mostly chemistry and electricity)
Each day we will select two or three experiments from the following list, depending on weather and ability of the students. We reserve the right to change the subjects as necessary to meet the needs of the children. The age group for all programs is 5 - 11. All students will be together for the introduction and story part of the lesson, but for most of the experiments they will be split into two groups by age.
•Laser Sound Waves: Scream into a cup and see what kinds of vibrations your voice makes. Note: parents must give permission so students can take laser pens home.
•Exploding Film Cans: A little spark plus a little breath spray creates a loud bang, and away it goes!
•Dry Ice: Make fog, bubbling potions, and screaming pieces of metal with this versatile material.
•Ice Cream: Melt some ice cream and then try to freeze it again with ice cubes.
•Solar Furnace: Melt a penny in 30 seconds, create instant flames on wood, and turn a rock into hot lava!
•Electricity from the Sun: We now have some large solar panels so we can compare our solar furnaces with these that produce electricity.
•Tesla Coil: Create a monster face with long squirming snakes of electricity coming out of its eyes and ears.
•Van De Graaf Generator: Create lightning bolts, levitate pie tins, and make your long hair stand on end with static electricity.
•Jacob’s Ladder: See what happens when electricity sparks through different types of gasses.
•Hand-Crank Electr
icity: Spin a generator hooked up to motors, lights, fans, bells, and electromagnets to see how it feels.
•Calcium Carbide: Water plus smelly rocks plus a spark makes big boom!
•Burn Things With Electricity: Thomas Edison had way too much fun burning things up with electricity, so we will too.
•Hot, Cold, and Fizzy: Mix chemicals together and watch them change color, feel them change temperature, smell them getting nasty, and hear the bag pop!
•Kill the Candle: In our un-birthday party we will snuff out the lives of dozens of candles in the interest of science.
•Oil Lamps: Burn all kinds of cloth samples soaked in oil to see which ones will make the best lamp.
•Exploding Bubbles: Hear what happens when an innocent little blob of soap bubbles are held next to a candle flame.
Living on a Cloud (Handy things to know when living up in the air)
Each day we will select two or three experiments from the following list, depending on weather and ability of the students. We reserve the right to change the subjects as necessary to meet the needs of the children. The age group for all programs is 5 - 11. All students will be together for the introduction and story part of the lesson, but for most of the experiments they will be split into two groups by age.
•Hot Air Balloons: Fill a huge balloon with hot air and watch it float up in the sky like a jellyfish.
•Glow Sticks: Put glow sticks in hot and cold water to see what happens and then cut one open and experiment with the chemicals. (non-toxic)
•Gigantic Soap Bubbles: Make bubble creatures, snake bubbles, square bubbles, and bubbles with you inside!
•Lasers and Mirrors: Give yourself 1000 eyes, create the illusion of a tunnel deep into the earth, make a laser show, and instantly create 10 of anything you can draw.
•Spinning, Smoking Sticks: Use skate-board wheels plus a bow and arrow to create smoke and maybe even fire if you're lucky.
•Straw Rockets: Shoot a straw clear out of sight with a tube and an ordinary balloon.
•Black Light: Create artwork that is transformed into something else when we turn on the ultraviolet light.
•Water Rockets: Launch 2-liter bottles with air pressure and then with air pressure plus water. Improve the design by making it more aerodynamic to see how far it will go.
•Wind Chill Factor: Feel what happens when wet hands meet high winds!
•Dry Ice: Make fog, bubbling potions, and screaming pieces of metal with this versatile material.
•Rainbow Makers: Bounce beams of sunlight through the dark laboratory and into crystals and prisms to see if any rainbows appear.
•Smoke Rings: Try all kinds of containers to see if you can make smoke rings.
•Balloon Rockets: Launch screaming balloons all over the place and try to make them come back to you.
•Straw Tower: Build a tower as tall as you can and then see if it can hold King Kong.
•Tall Straw: Suck on a straw? That's easy. But can you make a 15 foot tall straw work?
•Heat Bags: Mix a little iron powder, a little charcoal, and a little salt water to see if you can make it hot enough to melt the mixing cup.
•Liquid Crystals: Discover how to make yourself invisible to infrared night vision goggles.
•Helium Balloons: These balloons can go up -- they can go down -- but can you make them stay right in the middle?
Sorcerer's Apprentice (Mostly magic)
Each day we will select two or three experiments from the following list, depending on weather and ability of the students. We reserve the right to change the subjects as necessary to meet the needs of the children. The age group for all programs is 5 - 11. All students will be together for the introduction and story part of the lesson, but for most of the experiments they will be split into two groups by age.
•Flash Paper: Coat paper with chemicals to make it burn really fast, medium, or slow.
•Fireworks Colors: Put chemicals on paper and make them burn red, blue, green, violet, and bright orange.
•Telegraph Key: Create a blithering idiot monster that can only click and vibrate all over the place.
•Corn Starch Monsters: Place white gooey stuff in a cup and then shake it up and down with a motor just right and it will grow arms and legs and try to crawl right out of the cup!
•Color Changers: Mix chemicals to make inks that will change colors when they cross over each other.
•Cartesian Divers: Trick your friends with this creature that swims up or down at your command but does nothing for them.
•Wire with 
a Memory: Burn a stick wound with wire and now it will always return to that shape when it gets warm.
•Polarized Light: Clear objects look clear and frost looks white, but with these glasses you will see all kinds of wonderful colors.
•Egg-in-a-Jar: Throw burning paper into a jar and just watch to see if an egg or a water balloon will get sucked into the jar with it.
•Yanking the Tablecloth: Now you too can pull a tablecloth off of a table full of dishes and silverware.
•Soda and Mentos: Which soda will squirt highest? Should the soda be warm or cold? How many mentos work best? All this you will discover!
•Destructive Testing: Twist, tear, cut, smash and bend stuff until it breaks. This way we can decide which materials will work best to save a stranded person.
•Dry Ice: Make fog, bubbling potions, and screaming pieces of metal with this versatile material.
•Static Electricity Motor: Use the invisible attraction of static electricity to make things spin.
•Tricking Your Eyes: View all kinds of optical illusions and also see what happens when bright colored lights flash into your eyes and confuse your poor brain.
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