Connected on 2009-09-18 08:45:00 from , IL, US
- 7:54am
- Bugscope Team vac good, starting presets
- 8:00am
- Teacher Good morning!
- Bugscope Team hi clark, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we are setting up presets at the moment
- Teacher We will not be back until 8:45...just checking in!
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team cool, no problemo
- 8:06am
- Teacher my classes today will be in 15-20 segments
- Bugscope Team ok, are the students going to login as well?
- Teacher We have quiz at the beginning of the hour then we will meet with you guys...thanks again see you at 8:45
- Bugscope Team ok
- Teacher no we will do our class from my smartboard
- Bugscope Team the session is 3 hours, right?
- Teacher we just turned in inects collections yesterday
- Bugscope Team ah, okay, smartboard is fine
- Teacher yes the session is 3 hours...off and on.
- Bugscope Team so this is the hole school then? right?
- Bugscope Team i mean, you are trying to get all classes to see bugscope?
- Teacher no just my biology classes. So 4 different classes willl get a small dose of what you guys do
- Bugscope Team ah, okay, so 15-20 minute segments? so that means some time inbetween will be idle?
- 8:11am
- Bugscope Team idle for us i mean, but not idle for you?
- Bugscope Team Twilight of the Idle
- Teacher You are correct....Idle for you ....but NOT for me :)
- Bugscope Team :) cool, no problem.
- Bugscope Team this is so cool
- 8:16am
- Bugscope Team Cate put a stunning sample together today.
- 8:24am
- Teacher Great-thank you
- 8:30am
- Teacher We are here....good morning!
- Bugscope Team Ah, so are you ready to start?
- Teacher yes
- Teacher what are we looking at?
- 8:35am
- Bugscope Team this is a dragonfly tarsus
- Bugscope Team ok, i just unlocked the session
- Bugscope Team you should now see controls for the microscope on the right side of your browser
- Bugscope Team magnify, navigation, focus, adjust
- Bugscope Team You now have control.
- Bugscope Team go ahead and ask any questions you have, we are here to answer them, and to help guide you to control the scope
- Bugscope Team we think this is cool because it is uncommon to see those 'claws' on this portion of the limb.
- Teacher what is a dragonfly tarsus?
- Bugscope Team notice the scale bar in the lower left of the image, 1 um = 1 micrometer (micron) = one millionth of a meter
- Bugscope Team the tarsi are the last several joints at the end of the arm or leg
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag way down you can see where you are
- Bugscope Team had to pull the wings off of the dragonfly to get it on the stub
- Teacher what does the hairs do?
Bugscope Team those hairs are vital! they are called setae (sea-tea), and they stick through the exoskeleton to nerves underneath, and so that's how insects feel their environment
- Bugscope Team and if you had armor, as well, you would need a means of sensing your environment
- Bugscope Team insects have TONS of hair (setae)
- 8:41am
- Bugscope Team but we normally don't see the hair (setae) because we don't normally look at insects in a electron microscope... :)
- Bugscope Team some of the setae are mechanosensory, like cat or rat whiskers, and some are chemosensory, meaning they can be used to smell, to pick up scents, and some of the setae are thermosensory
- Bugscope Team here we see one of the compound eyes
- Bugscope Team this is still the dragonfly...
- Teacher hey this is andrew roney
- Teacher whats up
- Bugscope Team the eye is called a compound eye - each facet has a lens in it. the facets are called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team yo andrew, how's it going?
- Bugscope Team this dragonfly is also interesting to us because it has those pores in the palps that look like spiracles
- Teacher why is the eye compound?
Bugscope Team well, the individual facets, or an ommatidium, the lens inside can't move around, it is fixed. so it needs a LOT more ommatidia in oder to get a wide angle view of the world...
- Bugscope Team the palps are the accessory mouthparts
- Bugscope Team there are several reasons it is beneficial to have compound eyes
- Bugscope Team I think Alex is answering that...
- Teacher how does this scaning miscroscope work?
Bugscope Team the samples are coated with a very thin film (a few nanometers) of gold-palladium to make the surfaces conductive
- Bugscope Team the hundreds of facets of the compound eye also give the insect many different pictures of the world, all at once, and that seems to help the insect with vision. some flying insects have GREAT vision
- Bugscope Team and we beam electrons at the samples in a vacuum chanber; what we see is the signal from the secondary electrons that come back from the sample
- 8:46am
- Bugscope Team some compound eyes have thousands of facets, like this dragonfly does
- Bugscope Team so we could not see color even if the samples had not been coated with gold-palladium (they look silver to the eye) because we are collecting the images as signal rather than light
- Bugscope Team once you have exhausted your interest in this you may choose from one of the other presets and check out something else
- Teacher what is the highs mag. we can go to ?
- Bugscope Team this is pretty cool too -- you can see the tenent setae that help this insect stick to surfaces -- such as walls and ceilings, for some insects
- Bugscope Team but you can see that if you went that high there might not be much to see
- Bugscope Team you can see the segments of the legs here as well, the tarsi
- Bugscope Team when we do high-res imaging we also work at a shorter distance from the samples than today
- Bugscope Team and then the antenna's are wrapped around the face area...
- Bugscope Team this Mexican bean beetle has someone else's scales all over its face
- Bugscope Team so it is hard to see the head, but it is right there
- Teacher what is a good one to see up close pteety good?
- Bugscope Team try preset 21 and see how that is
- 8:51am
- Bugscope Team brochosomes are produced by the leafhopper, and only by the leafhopper. brochosomes were unknown to mankind until someone looked at a leafhopper under an electron microscope. brochosomes are very very small!
- Bugscope Team I did a little tweaking just now -- the sample drifted since we made the preset
- Teacher is that pollen on the antenna
Bugscope Team nope, these are the brochosomes
- Teacher ?
- Teacher what is that?
- Bugscope Team those are much smaller than pollen -- they are usually a few hundred nm across
- Bugscope Team they are smaller than a micron (one millionth of a meter)
- Bugscope Team these are the brochosomes, produced by a leafhopper
- Bugscope Team they are waxy pellets that are thought to help the leafhopper keep its eggs from drying out
- Bugscope Team leafhoppers have an 'anointing' behavior in which they spread these on their exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team the image would be much better if we were closer, but in order to be able to see larger portions of insects at low mag, we are at a long working distance
- Teacher We just got kicked off...we are back.
Bugscope Team ack, sorry, glad you are back
- Bugscope Team if you click on the micron bar you can see some of the parameters we are working with
- Teacher This class is about over...we will be back around 9:20. THANK YOU!
- Bugscope Team ok, see you then
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- 9:01am
- Bugscope Team HI Stephanie!
- Bugscope Team Hi Sherfey! Where are you from?
- Bugscope Team hi! i'm from the ento dept.... rob mitchell recruited me to help today!
- Bugscope Team We knew you might be on -- Welcome!
- Bugscope Team i don't know
- Bugscope Team how to do that
- Bugscope Team haha
- Bugscope Team oh, cool
- Bugscope Team you can operate the 'scope using the controls on the top right, as you now know
- 9:06am
- Bugscope Team and you can also choose from among the presets, to the right of the chat
- Bugscope Team the class will not be back until about 9:25 if you would like to drive around
- Bugscope Team another thing -- you can click on a question someone gives us and write your answer so that it not only shows up in chat but in the space to the left
- Bugscope Team when you click on the question it becomes highlighted and lets us all know that someone has chosen to answer it
- Bugscope Team yeah! i'm here!
- 9:12am
- Bugscope Team Phew.
- 9:17am
- Bugscope Team heh
- 9:23am
- Teacher Hi, my 2nd hour class is here
- Bugscope Team hi students, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team here is a nice friendly tick for you
- Teacher What part is this?
- Bugscope Team you can see the eyespots, and you can see the part -- the hypostome -- that sticks into your skin
- Bugscope Team those palps on either side fold away and the central part sticks into you
- Teacher we do not have the magnification buttons on our screen
Bugscope Team ah, i just transfered control to Clark1, you should see it now... sorry bout that
- Bugscope Team the lower portion holds fast with its recurved spines, and the top portion rasps the skin to get the blood out
- 9:29am
- Teacher can we break the microscope if we go too far in?
Bugscope Team no you just won't see much, probably
- Bugscope Team heh, no way. you can do ANYTHING with the controls. it won't break anything. we might need to reset some things if you drive off the edge, but that is no problemo
- Bugscope Team the tick is reclining against a stir stick
- Bugscope Team it is also fully engorged with blood
- Bugscope Team I think I found an RBC this morning. they are usually 8 to 14 microns in diameter
- Teacher what's RBC?
- Bugscope Team it doesn't look perfect, though. they do not always airdry well. that is preset 9
- Bugscope Team red blood cell
- Bugscope Team erythrocyte
- Bugscope Team As you can see, and probably have experienced, ticks can expand to enormous sizes to hold all the blood they eat.
- Bugscope Team avian RBCs have nuclei, but those of mammals do not
- Bugscope Team it's like a globe!
- Bugscope Team only the female ticks engorge this much
- Teacher how much does the microscope cost?
Bugscope Team about $600,000 in 1998
- Bugscope Team and it's to feed her batch of eggs
- 9:34am
- Bugscope Team see the little ridges? when it was small they were folded up
- Teacher has the technology changed a lot in 11 years?
- Bugscope Team it is a nice one, with a field emission electron gun plus the capability to work in 'wet mode,' plus a lot of extra stuff
- Bugscope Team since 1998 this type of microscope has gotten easier to use, but they are basically the same
- Bugscope Team the microscope has its own air, filtered electrical power, chilled water, nitrogen, etc.
- Bugscope Team Rob and Stephanie confirmed for us that this is actually a damselfly.
- Bugscope Team the liquid nitrogen is very interesting, i'm afraid of that stuff, but scott handles it like it's no big deal
- Bugscope Team click to stop
- Teacher Houston, we lost control of the magnification!!!!!
- Bugscope Team and go to a lower mag if you do not see anything interesting
- Bugscope Team aw
- Bugscope Team sorry
- Bugscope Team can you drive now?
- Bugscope Team when using "click to drive", you click once to start moving, then click again to stop... yay! good recovery!
- Bugscope Team I made the last few changes...
- 9:39am
- Bugscope Team hmmm, let me see
- Teacher do we need to re-login?
- Bugscope Team try refreshing your browser, F5
- Teacher YAAAAAY!!!! thanks!
- Bugscope Team do you see the controls at all?
- Teacher =)
- Teacher yes we have them now
- Bugscope Team cool palps here
- Bugscope Team the one at the bottom of the screen looks like a spiracle, up close
- Bugscope Team the palp looks like it has a spiracle, that is
- Teacher be back in 15 or 20 minutes, class change
- Bugscope Team okay
- Bugscope Team okay see you soon!
- 9:48am
- 9:57am
- Teacher hi we are back! what are we looking at?
- Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope!
- Teacher what are we looking at?
- Bugscope Team It looks like some "taste buds" on a damselfly.
- Bugscope Team You can see as we zoom out that the palps are the four "arms" that come out from the mouth.
- Teacher why aren
- Teacher why arent they in their mouth
Bugscope Team insect's don't have mouths like we do... the internal parts and the external parts are collectively called 'the mouth'
- Teacher what is that?
- 10:02am
- Bugscope Team Well, at the moment, we are seeing a lot of hairs, or 'setae', on the insect's body.
- Bugscope Team these hairs, they are called setae (sea-tea) and they help insects the sense their environment
- Bugscope Team the setae stick through the exoskeleton, to nerves underneath
- Bugscope Team Ahh. That was the base of the antenna.
- Bugscope Team ah, this is a damselfly
- Bugscope Team since the insect exoskeleton has no nerves in it, those setae are vital so the insect can feel it's way around. the setae can be chemosensory or mechanosensory, at least
- Bugscope Team insects smell things with chemosensory setae
- Bugscope Team now human, instead of having an exoskeleton, we have skin, and nerves in our skin to the feeling for us...
- 10:07am
- Bugscope Team nice job driving the scope!
- Bugscope Team hmm, are these ocelli? yes!
- Bugscope Team those are simple eyes
- Bugscope Team as opposed to compound eyes
- Bugscope Team ah, okay, these are wing scales
- Bugscope Team wow, if you look closely, you can see a compound eye buried under all the scales, to the right side of the head
- Bugscope Team this poor little dude has his entire face covered in scales!
- Bugscope Team this is the face of the Mexican bean beetle, covered with scales from some other insect.
- Bugscope Team Insects with scales include butterflies, moths, skippers, silverfish, mosquitos, and very few beetles
- Teacher what is this?
- Bugscope Team this moved a bit since we made the preset
- 10:12am
- Teacher what is this?
- Bugscope Team it is a closeup of the claw of an insect related to a grasshopper
- Bugscope Team see the scalebar?
- Teacher yes
- Bugscope Team bacteria the rod-shaped ones called bacilli, are often 2 microns in length
- Bugscope Team 1 um = 1 micrometer (micron) = 1 millionth of a meter
- Bugscope Team so we would see bacteria if there were any
- Bugscope Team so that was a close up of a tarsi segment, just below the claw
- Bugscope Team now you see the claw, and you can also tell that this little dude is not likely to be able to climb walls
- Bugscope Team it has no pads (the pad is called a pulvillus) with tenent setae on them that help insects stick to vertical surfaces
- Teacher which preset has the bsomes on its antennea?
- Bugscope Team 22
- Bugscope Team once you get there we may have to move the position slightly
- Bugscope Team The claws are useful for climbing rough surfaces, though - like tree bark.
- Bugscope Team ah, there are the brochosomes
- Bugscope Team brochosomes were first discovered by scientists in 1952, when looking at leafhopper under an electron microscope
- Teacher what do the spears do?
- Bugscope Team this is kind of disappointing because these are so small we would normally work much closer to the sample to get better resolution
- 10:17am
- Bugscope Team you can see that these are sensory, and likely mechanosensory because of the way they are fluted
- Bugscope Team those spears are setae, i think?
- Bugscope Team they are likely wind or touch sensors, I bet
- Teacher what is their importance?
- Bugscope Team insects do not have skin, and so they do not have nerve endings in their skin like we do
- Bugscope Team they have an exoskeleton, which is kind of like having armor
- Bugscope Team most, if not all, of the hair like things you see on insects help them to sense their environment. it'd kinda like cat whiskers, but imagine them all over the insect body, so that's how they feel, with the hairs
- Teacher cool\
- Teacher cool
- Bugscope Team so in order to be able to sense their environment they have hundreds and sometimes thousands of setae that help them feel and taste the outer world
- Teacher We won't be back until 11:15. THANK YOU! YOU'RE SOOOOO COOL!!!
- Bugscope Team some of the setae are also thermosensory
- Bugscope Team some setae (preset #13) are there to help insects stick to things. tenent setae use a very special force to help them stick to walls and such
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team Insects also have spines for defense, but they are much larger. Notice that while these look dangerous and pointy, we're still only at 8 microns!
- Bugscope Team you all are doing GREAT!
- Bugscope Team van der waals... two a's. those darn dutch!
- 10:23am
- Bugscope Team van der waals is the name of a dutch scientist who helped discover the force that is used by tenent setae
- Bugscope Team that force is called the van der waals force
- Bugscope Team the Gecko setae people think they have that wrapped up, you know, since those setae are much smaller
- Bugscope Team they think only the Gecko setae are actually utilizing van der waals. I think it is a nerd pride thing, kind of funny
- Bugscope Team Vertebrate researchers. What do they know?
- Bugscope Team ha. they were just waiting for a chance to be junior physicists
- Bugscope Team or chemists
- Bugscope Team we had contacted them a few years ago when the Gecko setae thing came out, and they were rude so I am ragging on them.
- 10:29am
- Bugscope Team brochosomes, much clearer
- 10:34am
- Bugscope Team still not as good as we could get if the working distance was closer
- 10:54am
- Bugscope Team Clark1, when you are ready again, you might want to do a refresh (F5), just to make sure things work fine. sometimes idling can confuse things...
- 11:01am
- 11:10am
- Teacher We will be here in about 2-3 minutes
- Bugscope Team sounds good, we are here
- Teacher Hi
- Bugscope Team hi, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team hi!
- 11:15am
- Bugscope Team we are currently look at tiny little things called brochosomes
- Bugscope Team Here we see brochosomes on a spine on the antenna of some sort of lepidopteran.
- Bugscope Team brochosomes come from the leafhopper, they are so small that scientists didn't discover them until 1952, with the help of an electron microscope
- Teacher What are their function?
- Bugscope Team Brochosomes are produced only by leafhoppers, but they get onto other insects as well. Sometimes because the insect was eating the leafhopper and sometimes because they were collected together.
- Bugscope Team They are thought to help keep leafhopper eggs from drying out.
- Bugscope Team They'll show up on adult leafhoppers as well.
- Bugscope Team Water loss is actually a major problem for insects, so they have many different ways of keeping water from getting out.
- Bugscope Team Leafhoppers have what is called an 'anointing behavior,' in which they spread the brochs onto the surface of their exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team there is a leafhopper in the 'scope today, but it is kind of sad-looking.'
- Teacher What is this picture showing?
- Bugscope Team now we are looking at the mouthparts of a damselfly
- Bugscope Team You can see four 'arms' coming out of the mouth - those are the "palps".
- Bugscope Team check out the HUGE compound eye in the upper left
- Bugscope Team we see mostly the jaws and the palps, which help the damselfly manipulate and taste its food
- 11:20am
- Bugscope Team bees have brushy tongues like that we just saw
- Bugscope Team Excellent view there of the eye. All those little hexagons are the ommatidia.
- Bugscope Team unlike human eye sockets, the compound eye can't move the lens around, so it needs to have many facets curved around, each lens pointing a different direction, so the insect can see a wide angle
- Bugscope Team that is why it is hard to catch flying insects -- to them we may seem to move in geological time
- Bugscope Team this is the tip of a spider's 'hand'
- Bugscope Team But, the downside is that the insect has a much blurrier view of the world. Our eyes are better at picking up details.
- Bugscope Team spiders produce silk that is not sticky as well as the normal sticky web silk
- Bugscope Team spiders can also, if they get stuck, eat the web. they are good recyclers, or some of them are
- Bugscope Team it's easy to forget how small these things are we are looking at. check our the scale bar in the lower left, 1 um = 1 micrometer (micron) = 1 millionth of a meter. that is mega-small!
- Bugscope Team another cool thing about spiders is that they have a autotomizing capability: they can just let one of their legs go, fall off, if for example they sense that it has been bitten and has venom entering it.
- 11:25am
- Teacher are you excited to talk to us?
Bugscope Team totally! doing these sessions is very cool for us
- Bugscope Team spiders are soft-bodied, so when they die and dry out they shrivel quite a bit
- Bugscope Team uh yeah!
- Bugscope Team yeah! especially about the tick!
- Bugscope Team we are lucky to be able to work with this cool equipment, and we are happy to be able to share it
- Bugscope Team bugscope was started more than 10 years ago, with a goal to try to get school kids interested in science. we hope this works!
- Bugscope Team this is one of the tick claws
- Bugscope Team ticks are not insects, and when they are adults they have eight legs
- Bugscope Team this one is swollen with blood
- Bugscope Team Pretty creepy looking.
- Teacher how big can a tick get?
Bugscope Team Good question. On a human, most of them are pretty small - usually no mor than a centimeter when full of blood.
- Bugscope Team I have never seen one larger than a very small grape, or a very big pea
- Bugscope Team when engorged they can get the size of a dime or so
- Bugscope Team this is the part that rasps against your skin and gets the blood moving
- Bugscope Team only the females get fully engorged like this... the blood is to feed her mass of eggs
- Bugscope Team ticks can lay between 20,000 and 40,000 eggs at a time
- 11:31am
- Teacher thats a lot of eggs...
- Teacher whats the best way yo kill a tick?
Bugscope Team once it is off of you, you can put it in ethanol and send it to us
Bugscope Team well, a single tick? i jut rub it against my skin, and that seems to smash it. but ticks are a major carrier of disease, so population control of ticks is a very large and important field of study
- Bugscope Team this is the hypostome -- the part that sticks into your skin
- Bugscope Team when they're on you, it's best to use tweezers to grab them as close to the head as possible and pull straight out
- Bugscope Team yes! i love that idea
- Bugscope Team However, don't do things like hold a match next to it - that will actually make the tick regurgitate into you, which increases the chance that you catch a disease.
- Teacher give us ur best bug joke :D
Bugscope Team where would you put an injured insect??? in an ANTbulance!
- Bugscope Team this appears to be a kind of sad looking RBC
- Bugscope Team time flies like an arrow...... fruit flies like a banana!
- Bugscope Team this is the mouth of a water boatman
- Bugscope Team you can see the super sharp jaws
- Bugscope Team right here
- Bugscope Team insect mouthparts usually work sideways compared to ours
- 11:36am
- Bugscope Team you can see the palps here, too
- Bugscope Team yeah the ants will take care of injured insects for sure
- Bugscope Team ball and socket
- Teacher whats this
- Bugscope Team this is the base of one of the palps, I think
- Bugscope Team antennae have similar bases
- Bugscope Team It's a ball-and-socket joint, just like a human hipbone. Gives a wide range of movement.
- Bugscope Team This is a great view of the tip of an insect's foot.
- Bugscope Team Q: why was the centipede late? A: because he was playing little miss piggy with his baby brother
- Bugscope Team See the claws for holding onto rough surfaces, and the pads have oil that lets them stick to flat things like glass.
- Bugscope Team this Mexican bean beetle has scales all over its face
- Bugscope Team the scales are from other insects: moths or butterflies, for example
- Teacher can you show us a preset of the sticky pads on an insects foot?
Bugscope Team i just clicked on preset #13, that is the tenent setae (sticky pad) on a water-boatman
- Bugscope Team Mexican bean beetles are herbivores, so it probably just got on there by accident.
- Teacher thank you
- Bugscope Team this is part of the leg of the water boatman, which I might have misidentified
- Bugscope Team it is an aquatic beetle
- Bugscope Team see its eye?
- 11:41am
- Teacher yes
- Teacher goodbye for now
- Bugscope Team it is made so that the beetle can see underwater
- Bugscope Team thank you clark1, you did GREAT!
- Teacher Great....my classes are finished! 120 kids saw the scope today--thank you!!!
- Bugscope Team Thanks for the questions!
- Teacher The last group did a fantastic job!
- Bugscope Team great job, you did really well
- Teacher See you next year
- Bugscope Team remember....
- Bugscope Team the chat and images are saved to you member page...
- Teacher remember?
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-095/
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-095
- Teacher oh yeah-got it.
- Bugscope Team ah sorry, was trying to piece out that sentence
- Bugscope Team Cool. See you next year!
- Bugscope Team over and out need to beat the nerds to the cafeteria
- 11:46am
- Bugscope Team stopping rxl, disabling the session, locking
- Bugscope Team nice session everyone
- Bugscope Team over and out
