Museum Will Factor Fun Into Equation

It’s just two months before you can relax on a bed of 3,500 steel nails and finger-paint by computer (it makes cleanup easy).

The Taco Bell Discovery Science Center, which will open Dec. 19 in Santa Ana, offered a sneak preview Friday of what’s to come, as work crews hammered and drilled around the magnet wall and the gravity well.

“People are a little bit scared of science, and we know that,” said Mark Walhimer, the vice president of exhibits. “People are a little intimidated.”

So he has a motto: “Trust us. Trust us, and you’re going to have some fun.”

With its newest museum, Orange County is joining the ranks of a worldwide infatuation with hands-on discovery centers. An estimated 224 such child-oriented science museums have been built during the last 20 years.

A spokeswoman for the Assn. of Science-Technology Centers Inc., which monitors the growth of such facilities, said their popularity signifies a public interest in learning outside the classroom.

“Science education is very high on the public agenda,” said Bonnie VanDorn, executive director of the Washington, D.C., organization.

But more than that, science centers are a reputation-builder for the subject most commonly associated with frog dissections and petri dishes.

“Lots of people think about science in terms of biology, chemistry and the dry textbooks and lab-oriented assignments,” VanDorn said. “Science centers recognize that science is part of everyday life. They try very hard to make it interesting and fun.”

Indeed. At Orange County’s discovery center, visitors can climb a rock wall and dance on a musical floor. They can make a mini-earthquake swallow up a city of blocks and build an archway, fitting soft-block “stones” together.

Exhibits are designed to reflect the Southern California landscape and aesthetics. So, naturally, a computer will identify your skin type and decide how many UV rays you can handle.

To demonstrate the power of air pressure, a cyclone of air suspends a plastic beach ball in mid-air. A “shake table” simulates the effects of an earthquake on model-size skyscrapers. Visitors also can redirect the pattern of a computer-generated, 8-foot-tall tornado.

In other exhibits, you can test your balance and watch your image transformed on a 10-foot screen in different colors and lights.

The 59,000-square-foot building overlooking the Santa Ana Freeway is officially known as the Taco Bell Discovery Science Center because of the fast-food company’s $2-million contribution. Company officials also aided center staff in acquiring $6.75 million in state financing for the nonprofit museum. A corporate campaign begun in 1990 so far has netted $23.8 million, with about $3.5 million allocated for the museum’s annual operating budget.

Karen Johnson, president of the Discovery Science Center, said she expects 350,000 people to visit the first year, paying $8 per adult and $6 per child.

“They want to know things. They want to learn about things,” Johnson said. “With technology, they say: ‘I see that and I want to know how it works.’ ”

Next year, officials hope to begin fund-raising for the second phase of the project, which would add a large-screen theater, similar to an Imax, and more space for exhibits.

While news releases describe the center as entertaining for both children and adults, a special effort is being made to reach students. The center will offer day camps, field trips and even sleepovers, when children can run around the nearly 100 exhibits all night long.

Discovery Center staff will visit classrooms, giving lectures on astronomy, electricity and the three states of matter--gas, liquid and solid--among other topics. And teachers can schedule free time in the center’s computer lab to brush up on their Web-surfing skills and get other training.

But the doors are just as wide open to the science-challenged among us.

“We’re saying to people: ‘Hey, give science another chance,’ ” Johnson said. “We’re not as mysterious, as hard to understand, as boring as you were led to believe in school.”