Cocktails at ‘The Cube’ : Partiers can play with about 100 exhibits when they rent the venue for special occasions.

You choose: Rubber chicken and a generic dance band or a bed of nails to lie on.

Undecided? OK, bed of nails, a simulated 6.4 earthquake and a build-your-own Martian rover to play with.

Play, indeed, edutainment-style, is what the Discovery Science Center is offering to turn the usual hotel-ballroom holiday party, awards dinner or prom night into virtual Earth, air and space exploration.

All of the center’s 100 hands-on exhibits will be fully functional for revelers of all stripes, some of whom tried out its bed of nails during a recent black-tie fund-raiser. Taffeta and tuxedos met 3,500 sharp steel spikes.

“We had people standing in line to get on,” spokeswoman Pam Shambra said. Once the center opens, others are likely to let loose in Recollections, a small, dark room in which a camera records all body movements, then projects the arm waves and leg kicks as a series of brilliantly colored shadows.

“After a few glasses of wine, people start to dance in here,” Shambra said.

Staffers will be on hand at all gatherings to answer questions about exhibits. They’ll also perform such flashy science demos as En Fuego (“On Fire”), showing how and explaining why flames keep flickering when plunged into a sand pit.

Dining and dancing can be part of the picture too. A portable dance floor and band may be set up inside the center’s banquet room, which seats 300, and a graceful, glassed-in foyer is a good spot for cocktails.

There are a few restrictions, including no high school grad-night gatherings, since graduates don’t have to worry about behaving well enough to, well, graduate, Shambra said.

“Let’s just say there are lots of expensive exhibits here, and if people are not respectful, they can do a lot of damage.”

Also, all celebrations must transpire between 6 p.m. and midnight; the center’s 3-D Laser Theater will be dark (instructional movies are “too serious,” Shambra said); and, while all ages may party down, rental fees may be prohibitively high for a little kid’s birthday blowout.

The facility might offer discounted daytime children’s parties at $15 per child after officials determine during the next six months whether the parties crowd regular visitors, Shambra said. Another possibility involves opening to all kids the $35-per-head sleepover parties the center will test with Girl and Boy Scouts in the next half-year.

Until then, however, all party fees will begin at $5,000 for as many as 500 guests and go to twice that amount for 1,500. That doesn’t include food; the center’s Taco Bell and Pizza Hut Express stands won’t be open for parties. Also, renters feting teens or younger guests must pay for additional security guards (as well as provide adult chaperons).

A month before its scheduled opening date, the center had already booked 20 parties.

The Exhibits Make Fine Icebreakers

Among those coming in: Washington, D.C.-based American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, holding a workshop, the Greenlawn, New York-based National Assn. of Science Writers, staging an awards dinner, and Corona del Mar High School, planning a prom. The center also will be available for bat mitzvahs, bar mitzvahs and wedding receptions.

No matter what sort of shindig, the facility’s exhibits help break the ice and bring people together, Shambra said. She saw strangers at the recent fund-raiser making music together by jumping from spot to spot on a Musical Floor to trigger different tunes and sound effects.

“This is one of the few public places where you find people who don’t know each other doing stuff together,” she said.

Still, party guests with performance anxiety can rest assured. Several exhibits by the entrance, Shambra said, are designed “so that you can’t do anything wrong, you can’t get hurt and you can’t look silly.”

Even loners--and there’s one at every party--have nothing to fear. Upstairs in the Great Scientists area, they can remain in virtual isolation, asking questions, via computer, of inventor and entrepreneur Arnold O. Beckman, astronaut Buzz Aldrin and seismologist Lucy Johnson.

Unless previously booked, the facility is available any night of the week. For reservations, call (714) 542-2823 or (949) 888-9265.