Connected on 2010-04-08 11:30:00 from , ,
- 11:16am
- Bugscope Team Presets are done, session is unlocked. We are ready to go!
- 11:31am
- Bugscope Team Hi Diane
- Bugscope Team Hi Diane!
- 11:38am
- Bugscope Team Hi chillen!
- Bugscope Team Good morning Ms. Hillen!
- Bugscope Team Welcome back to Bugscope!
- Teacher Hello again. What are we looking at?
Bugscope Team this is a flea from a dog that an entomologist collected
- 11:43am
- Teacher Help! I am stuck
Bugscope Team You can select a preset to quickly jump back to somewhere interesting
- Bugscope Team sorry I am stuck on the phone
- Bugscope Team Hi Leilei!
- Bugscope Team Hi Diane!
- Bugscope Team Hi Diane!
- Bugscope Team haha
- Teacher My computer says it is still downloading the picture
- Bugscope Team So you're not seeing any new images coming through?
- 11:48am
- Bugscope Team Ms Hillen these are the tiny sticky hairs, called tenent setae, that allow insects to cling to surfaces like walls..
- Teacher We can't see it
- Bugscope Team we can't see it either, just a sec
- Teacher It's still downloading
- Bugscope Team You can try hitting F5 which will reload the page. That may help resolve it
- Bugscope Team wow
- Bugscope Team in the meantime because it has been driving away, we took you to a new preset.
- Bugscope Team can we call to help you with this?
- Bugscope Team now we're back on the tenent setae
- Bugscope Team These are tenent setae which allow the insect to walk on vertical surfaces
- Bugscope Team if you take the magnification down you can see where you are
- Bugscope Team they act like suction cups or velcro
- Teacher No thank you. The F5 worked.
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team if you click the mag down again, you will see more...
- Teacher How do you know if a ladybug is female or male?
Bugscope Team with some insects, like ladybugs, it is hard to tell the gender from outside -- the things that tell us if it is male or female are on the inside of the exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team Geckos have something similar
- Bugscope Team now we can see one of the claws, on one of the six legs/arms
- 11:53am
- Bugscope Team and you can see the sticky pad, called the pulvillus, with those tiny hairs on it
- Bugscope Team Although with geckos the 'hairs' are much much smaller which allows them to have a very cool dry adhesion technique, not requiring any glue. It's so useful that researchers are trying to copy it -- it's reusable and can hold an incredible amount of weight
- Bugscope Team with flies you can sometimes tell if they are male or female because female eyes are far apart and male eyes are close together
- Bugscope Team occasionally the markings on the outside are different between genders as well
- Teacher Can you please explain what we are looking at?
Bugscope Team this is one of the palps on a ladybug. The little finger like things are mechanosensory setae, which aid in tasting/smelling. The palps themselves are useful for moving around food in the mouth
- Bugscope Team the setae on the palp are chemosensory, and they are like tastebuds on your tongue
- 11:58am
- Bugscope Team oops scot is right i meant chemosensory
- Bugscope Team mechanosensory is for movement
- Bugscope Team Now you can almost see the other palp to the left
- Bugscope Team wow this is cool
- Bugscope Team now we are looking at crochettes on a caterpillar's 'prolegs'
- Bugscope Team they are tiny hooks that help the caterpillar climb/walk/cling to surfaces
- Bugscope Team many caterpillars have silk glands in their heads, and they can make web like a spider, to some extent
- Bugscope Team the crochettes may hook over the web
- Bugscope Team spider legs have some similarities to the prolegs
- Bugscope Team the caterpillar has six 'normal' legs like a regular insect, which it is. but it also has extra legs at this stage, called prolegs.
- 12:04pm
- Bugscope Team Please let us know if you have any trouble with driving, or anything. We have had network problems at the University recently, although they are supposed to have been fixed.
- Bugscope Team this is the caterpillar's head, and now we can see the six legs, or parts of them, plus the mouthparts and the tiny simple eyes, called stemmata
- 12:09pm
- Bugscope Team this is cool! this is one of the halteres, which Diptera ('two-winged') use to balance the motion of their wings.
- Bugscope Team the halteres beat opposite the beat of the wings and counterbalance them
- Bugscope Team The haltere looks like a little punching bag in flight, bouncing back and forth against the insect's body. It's purpose is similar to the gyroscopes in an airplane, they help it keep a solid reference so they can fly in a specific path through the air
- Bugscope Team the halteres are on the thorax, which is the 'chest' of the insect
- Teacher I've given up on the driving. I"ll try another preset
- Bugscope Team They often have very cool-looking structures called hypertrophied mechanoreceptors near the base
- Bugscope Team hey no problem just let us help when you need it
- Bugscope Team driving using the click to drive feature can be tricky because it's one click to drive and one click to stop
- Bugscope Team driving using click to center is easier
- Bugscope Team and of course you can always change the mag, etc.
- Teacher O.K. I'll give it a try
- Bugscope Team you are driving a $600,000 scanning electron microscope, and you are brave to do this -- it is not always easy
- 12:14pm
- Bugscope Team now we can see where we were
- Bugscope Team you can see the two wings, and the six legs, and the abdomen, which is shrunken, and you can see the head
- Bugscope Team the background is sticky carbon tape
- Bugscope Team everything we see is coated with gold-palladium to make it conductive so the electrons will bounce off of it or run to ground
- Bugscope Team if you wanted to look at the eye now you could increase the magnification
- Bugscope Team and you could recenter as necessary once the mag goes up
- Bugscope Team this is neat, too!
- Bugscope Team these are moth scales
- Bugscope Team you feel them as powder when you touch the wings -- they are so small
- Bugscope Team because the wings were so big we had to cut them to a smaller size to fit on the microscope stub
- 12:20pm
- Teacher Thank you. Once again we need to go. You guys really know a lot!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team Thank you for using bugscope again Ms. Hillen
- Bugscope Team Diane please let us know if you would like to drive or anything since Ms Hillen is done.
- Bugscope Team We gave you control of the microscope, so you should notice a difference in the layout of your window
- 12:25pm
- Bugscope Team Diane! We are going to close down...
- 3:02pm
