Mission Statement
Rock-it Science is a nonprofit organization that sparks, nurtures and develops young people’s enthusiasm and ability to learn science successfully. The primary focus of Rock-it Science is to provide science enrichment classes to underserved and at-risk youth.

Facility
Our Facility in Santa Clara, California, has classroom, warehouse, and office space. This is also where John McChesney develops and tests new lessons.

Lessons
  • In-school Instruction
  • Field Trips
  • Teacher Training
  • Summer Camps
  • Homeschool Classes
  • Instructional Videos

    • Past Sponsors
  • Northrup-Grumman Foundation
  • House Family Foundation
  • Noyce Foundation
  • Tessera Technologies
  • Mountain Winery
  • Individual Donors

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    History of Rock-it Science

    Rock-it Science began in the wonderful imagination of a robotics engineer named John McChesney, known to his many students as “Mr. Mac.”

    As a child, John loved to experiment with everything. The old saying, “give a small boy a hammer and the whole world becomes a nail” was never truer than with John. Everything had to be tested to see if it would burn, break, bounce, dissolve, melt, fly, cut, or have other magical properties.

    In 1984, when his daughter needed a science project for second grade, John had an excuse to introduce his kids to the joys of his childhood, and share all kinds of experiments with them.

    In 1986, John began developing an elaborate experiment for his daughter’s entire class. He created a videotaped story about all the aspects of density, complete with colorful cartoon characters and an experiment involving nine cubes made of materials ranging in density from foam to lead.

    Density Cubes ExperimentBalancing density cubes on a scale.

    While he was working on this, a college professor told him that children below the 3rd grade could not grasp the concept of density since it involved two variables: mass and volume. So John decided to test this experiment with kindergarten through 3rd grade kids to see if it was true. Surprisingly, they proved it isn’t -- they got the concept.

    John with Leyden Jar

    By the fall of 1989, John had developed 14 lessons and was giving free science lessons for all the teachers in his children’s school. He had also started giving lessons in other schools for a very minimal fee ($20 per lesson). To further this work, John founded a nonprofit organization called Wizard’s Workshop, Inc.

    In 1990, John started publishing a newsletter detailing the lessons and stories that had proven to be successful. This was published monthly for four years. As a result, the Wizard’s Workshop ended up with 80 lessons completely documented by the end of 1993. (more history)