Connected on 2011-11-16 12:00:00 from Greene, Georgia, United States
- 11:06am
- Bugscope Team sample chamber is pumping down quickly, and we will be on soon to make presets for today's session
- 11:22am
- 11:28am
- 11:33am
- Bugscope Team we're making presets now...
- 11:39am
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Teacher Hi! We are getting ready!
- Bugscope Team Yay! So are we -- just a few more presets, and we will be good to go.
- Guest hello
Bugscope Team Hello Terrell!
- Student Hi, these are some of the 2nd and 5th graders of Greensboro Elementary.
Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Guest this looks so cool
- Guest HEllO Kamyrn
- 11:44am
- Guest can you send a spider leg
Bugscope Team you mean can you send one to us, or you want to see one?
- Student oh my gosh is look weird
- Student My friends and I at GES are so excited about seeing the bugs! Bugscope is a fun, new way for us to learn about all of the bugs in the world!
Bugscope Team a few at a time, but we're working on it!
- Bugscope Team well the bacteria we had hoped to show you are so very small and also hard to find, but there will be a couple of them
- Guest OK
- 11:50am
- Guest Do you have a komoto dragon?(any part)
Bugscope Team yo Dude those are hardly related to insects/arthropods. no I am sorry.
- Student Sure, I'm fine with that
- Student Sure, that's fine. So, how long have you actually been in the Bugscobe industries?
Bugscope Team we started this project in March 1999.
- Guest ok nice
- Student That's a long time
- Bugscope Team you can tell this beetle came from someone's collection
- Student Wow,I didn't even know that.
- Student Oh, cool! What interested you in bugs?
Bugscope Team they are pretty amazing alien (to us) life forms
- Guest wow wow!
- Bugscope Team this is salt from a Wendy's restaurant
- Guest that is so cool
- Guest How many bugs have you researched?
Bugscope Team we have imaged thousands of them, I guess
- Bugscope Team this is an ant that was so small I couldn't see it well enough to mount it right side up
- Guest i know
- Student Who knew Wendy's salt was so exciting?
Bugscope Team we call it Aztec salt, since it has those incised-looking features
- Guest How strong is your microscope?
Bugscope Team we can take the mag to over 800,000x but cannot get publishable images at more than maybe 250,000x.
- Guest I like you research!
Bugscope Team yay!
- Guest it is the best
- Guest Thanks.\
- 11:55am
- Student Do you really have to go and recieve the parts of the bugs or are they just given to you?
Bugscope Team both. I just sent my sister a request to ask my nephews to collect insects for me in Austin TX
- Student Is it possible to access the Bugscope at home?
Bugscope Team yes it is. you can log on from anywhere, but it will only be live, like today, when we're up and running
- Guest that is so interesting
- Bugscope Team so if you take the mag up you will find some cool-looking stuff
- Guest Do you have a team leader.
Bugscope Team ha it's just me today
- Bugscope Team I am on two computers. The one with the SEM name is on the computer that drives the SEM.
- Guest can you see any kind of bug?
Bugscope Team pretty much. smaller ones are best, and we like insects that are specialized more than generalists, which are often not as interesting.
- Student So, is the Bugscope only located in Chicago, or are there locations over the state?
Bugscope Team only here in Urbana IL.
- Teacher How long have you been in the Bugscope program?
Bugscope Team I helped start it in early 1999.
- Student Are you interested in bugs a lot?
Bugscope Team yes more and more
- Guest Is that dust on the bug?
Bugscope Team it's dirt, but if you drive up close you will see diatoms
- Guest So who built the telescope?
Bugscope Team well, this is a microscope, so it goes the other way. it was built by Philips Electron Optics.
- 12:00pm
- Guest what are diatoms
Bugscope Team they are silica-shelled creatures that live in the water and have all kinds of cool shapes
- Bugscope Team You have control. You are the only person besides me who can drive.
- Guest what kind of bug is that
- Teacher Can we get control of the microscope?
Bugscope Team if you go to the screen on the left you can see all of the presets I made earlier, and you can click on any one to have the 'scope drive to that place.
- Guest Is that bactira
Bugscope Team this is one of the diatoms
- Bugscope Team Hubbard please let me know if you are having problems.
- Teacher We are good!
Bugscope Team totally cool
- Bugscope Team you can always change the mag, click to center, focus, change the contrast and brightness, and select from among the presets on the lefthand screen
- Bugscope Team this is an ant mandible, from the inside
- 12:05pm
- Bugscope Team ants are almost always female
- Bugscope Team if you see an ant with wings, and it's not the queen, it's a male
- Bugscope Team the tiny hairs you see, which we call 'setae,' are sensory
- Bugscope Team some setae are mechanosensory, meaning that they are sensitive to touch like cat or rat whiskers
- Guest What is a mandible?
Bugscope Team that is another word for jaw. In people, the lower jaw is the mandible and the upper jaw is called the maxilla.
- Bugscope Team some setae are chemosensory, meaning that they are chemical/smell sensitive. that is especially useful in the insect world
- Guest Is there a king?
Bugscope Team no. not in ants. males are not often welcome
- Guest Why is that.
- Teacher What is a mechanosensory?
Bugscope Team it means those setae are sensitive to touch, or to wind, like a cat's whiskers
- 12:10pm
- Bugscope Team there are a few fruitflies on the stub today
- Student Do you have a bug brain? (if so will you show it to us)
Bugscope Team it's on the inside, and I am sorry we cannot see it.
- Guest What are those on the eyes?
Bugscope Team the spikes?
- Guest it's so hairy!
- Guest can you send a ant head
Bugscope Team if you go back to the mandible and take the mag down lower you can see the head
- Guest do fruit flys have compond eyes?
- Student Why does the fruit fly's face looks like its angry?
Bugscope Team it's not really angry; it's just the way all of its features are arranged on its head
- Guest Are they endangered?
- Guest Yes the spikes.
Bugscope Team the tiny spikes are setae that are said to let the fruitfly know when it is windy, and where the wind is coming from, but I am not sure that is correct
- Student How can you tell the difference between house flies and fruit flies
Bugscope Team house flies are much larger, and their eyes are different, right away
- Guest Where is the mouth?
Bugscope Team this fly has sponging mouthparts; that is what looks kind of like a nose to A'nasia.
- Student Is that thing on the head a nose?
Bugscope Team it's the proboscis, but in this case proboscis does not mean 'nose,' as it sometimes does. it is the extension of the sponging mouthparts
- 12:16pm
- Teacher What is that thing coming out of its mouth?
Bugscope Team there are two palps we can see, and an extensible spongy portion that is now dry and a bit deformed from drying
- Bugscope Team so the furball-like things are palps, which are accessory mouthparts used to help taste and sometimes manipulate food
- Bugscope Team these are the fangs of a huge brown spider
- Bugscope Team I had to break some of its legs and its palps away so we could see the fangs
- Student It looks as if the spider has claws!
Bugscope Team they do have small claws as well
- Student What is that hairy stuff by the fangs?
Bugscope Team spiders are super sensitive to vibration, generally, and those setae help them with that
- Guest r thoose hairs sensers?
Bugscope Team yes they are!
- Student About how long is its tooth?
Bugscope Team check out the micron bar. you can see that they are more than a millimeter long
- Guest How many fangs does the huge brown spider have?
Bugscope Team two
- Bugscope Team the chelicers, or chelicerae, are the large muscular mouthparts that open and close the fangs so the spider can bite its prey
- Student What are setae?
Bugscope Team setae (pronounced see-tee) are what we call most of the hairlike things we see on insects and arthropods like spiders
- Guest it's fangs are so big
Bugscope Team yeah Dude
- Guest Can they sense danger?
Bugscope Team they can sense the earth rumbling when you walk toward them, so yes
- 12:22pm
- Student what causes them to be so sensitive to vibrations? Don't the legs virbrate when they walk quickly?
Bugscope Team the legs are cushioned, in a way, by the huge number of setae, but the plumose setae can also pick up vibrations in the air, such as sound.
- Guest Is that flap a wing?
- Bugscope Team if a spider is bitten by another spider and senses the venom going into its leg, for example, it can autotomize that leg, meaning that it can just let that leg fall off so the poison (venom) does not enter the body
- Student What exactly is that?
Bugscope Team it's a beetle's eye with the scale of a butterfly or moth, probably, on it
- Student That striped-like thing looks like a fin.
Bugscope Team that is a scale; it's what makes a butterfly's wing feel so silky to us
- Guest it looks like the outside of a beehive
Bugscope Team yes it does!
- Guest Can they breath under water?
Bugscope Team no they would close their spiracles and hold their breath that way
- Guest it looks like a wing
Bugscope Team yes, and its function -- one of them -- is much like that of a feather
- Guest it looks like a fin
- Student Its looks like its plastic with beads inside!
- 12:27pm
- Guest How big are they?
Bugscope Team they are so small they normally look like powder to us; maybe a hundred micrometers long, or longer
- Teacher Are there holes in it?
Bugscope Team yes there are!
- Student That looks like a crocheted blanket up close.
Bugscope Team the ridges actually refract light and produce what are called structural colors
- Guest Is that flap a wing?\
Bugscope Team this is a tiny fragment of a wing
- Bugscope Team one of the primary uses of scales is to help their bearers escape from spider webs
- Bugscope Team the scales come off very easily, and when a butterfly or moth flies into a spiderweb, it can sometimes leave the scales behind and slip out
- Guest Do they kill bugs?
- Student Why when you open salt and study it, it looks like a sphere, but up close, it looks like a cube.
- Guest it looks like a cube
Bugscope Team absolutely -- sodium and chlorine, when they combine as sodium chloride, form a cube. sugar, for example, does not form cubes
- Guest What are those around the salt?
Bugscope Team more salt, and the carbon tape the samples are stuck to
- Student Why does that look like a bacteria?
Bugscope Team bacteria are usually oval, like pills, but sometimes they are more round, and sometimes they are spiral
- 12:32pm
- Student How is it formed
Bugscope Team when the sodium ions combine with the chlorine ions they take a cube shape, and that shape is repeated as more ions add on.
- Guest it looks like a dice with no dots
Bugscope Team hah Yeah!
- Teacher Why does it look like a rock?
Bugscope Team it is a mineral, technically
- Guest Is the salt in oceans used in foods?
Bugscope Team I think it could be if it was cleaned.
- Bugscope Team Note that this is not common salt, which also forms cubes like this but does not have that incised pattern.
- Bugscope Team we can see only three of the spider's eyes
- Bugscope Team it's the way I mounted the spider on the stub today
- Bugscope Team but now you can see some of the cool plumose setae
- Guest How many eyes does it have?
Bugscope Team eight total
- Student Why does it look like a valley or a field?
Bugscope Team we are very close, and it appears that way because it is hard to see what it really is from this perspective
- Guest Is that a hole in front of the eyes?
- Guest why is it hairs so long
Bugscope Team they're kind of like individual antennae that way -- likely they are more sensitive
- Guest do it see through all of it's eyes
Bugscope Team yes it does, but often not well
- Student What are those hairy things on the eye?
Bugscope Team those are more setae
- Teacher Why does it look like eggs?
Bugscope Team the things that look like eggs are the simple eyes on the top of the spider's head
- Student Its hairs look like seaweed.
- 12:38pm
- Guest What kind of spider is that?
Bugscope Team it was a very large brown spider, but I don't know my spiders and cannot tell you what kind it really is
- Teacher How many legs does it have?
Bugscope Team it had eight legs and two palps, but I broke a few legs and one palp off
- Student Are those senseative to vibrations,too?
Bugscope Team yes they are!
- Student Are there hairs sticking out of it?
Bugscope Team yes there are
- Guest Is that a hole in front of the eyes?
- Bugscope Team the setae -- the hairs -- are called plumose hairs because they are kind of like pine trees. plumose means that it has fronds coming out all around
- Guest Is that spider posinous?
Bugscope Team yes all spiders produce venom, and they almost all feed by injecting their prey with the venom. the venom dissolves the inside organs of the prey, and the spider, who is apparently immune to the venom, sucks it all up like a milkshake.
- Student Why is this?
Bugscope Team you mean why are they all sensitive to vibration? it must help the spider to have a huge number of such hairs/setae
- 12:43pm
- Bugscope Team some spiders also have what are called 'urticating hairs.' those can be released when a dog, for example, sniffs too closely. the urticating (urticaria means 'itching') hairs irritate the dog's nose, and she/he leaves the spider alone.
- Bugscope Team insects do not carry combs and brushes with them, obviously. but they do sometimes have built-in combs to help clean their limbs and antennae
- Student What are the hairy things and worm looking things on the forelimb?
Bugscope Team the spinyn things all in a row form a comb to help keep the antennae clean
- Guest what is that on the bottom?
Bugscope Team you can see some microsetae, which are not sensory, and you can see the body of the limb itself
- Guest They look like spikes.
Bugscope Team they are much like tiny spikes
- Bugscope Team I just took the mag down a bit on the SEM so you can see a little better where we are
- Bugscope Team where we were :)
- Bugscope Team the padlike things with the tiny branches coming out of them are the antennae
- Bugscope Team this is a diatom with a pollen grain sitting next to it
- 12:48pm
- Bugscope Team it is on the exoskeleton of a cricket
- Bugscope Team isn't that cool? I like this kind of stuff
- Guest what is the thing that looks like a leaf?
Bugscope Team the thing on the left?
- Bugscope Team this thing?
- Guest yes
- Bugscope Team it's a diatom, which is an aquatic microscopic creature with a silica shell. this is all that's left -- the shell
- Student What is that thing that looks like a golfball?
Bugscope Team it's a pollen grain
- Bugscope Team if you look up diatoms, later, you will see that they come in all kinds of shapes
- Bugscope Team A'nasia I don't know what kind of pollen it is.
- Bugscope Team see the micron bar on the lower left, just below the screen?
- Bugscope Team the scale reads 5 microns, which is about 2.5 bacilli long.
- Bugscope Team bacilli are the bacteria that look like capsules
- Bugscope Team or I should say, most bacilli are about 2 microns (micrometers) long
- 12:53pm
- Bugscope Team a micron, or a micrometer, is one millionth of a meter long
- Bugscope Team or one thousandth of a millimeter, which itself is a thousandth of a meter
- Bugscope Team this is the cricket's head
- Teacher we are trying to get the fly head
- Bugscope Team I almost didn't put it on the stub today because it is so dirty
- Bugscope Team there it is!
- Bugscope Team this kind of fly, whatever exactly it is, is larger than a fruitfly by several times
- Bugscope Team it has aphids crawling on its thorax
- Bugscope Team I don't know how they got there
- Student what is that thing that looks like a seed ?
Bugscope Team in the fold there?
- Bugscope Team let's go see
- 12:59pm
- Bugscope Team it's a crystal of some sort
- Student no,it's up at they top.
Bugscope Team ha oops okay
- Guest what is that thing that looks like a venus flytrap
Bugscope Team not sure -- I will go back to where we were
- Student Is it on its back?
Bugscope Team yes but it is twisted a bit too
- Bugscope Team okay.
- Teacher yes that is what
- Bugscope Team the things to the right are the antennae, and the globby things to the left are the proboscis and one of the palps
- Bugscope Team this is one of the palps, which are sometimes called 'palpi'
- Guest What are palps?
- Bugscope Team palpi are accessory mouthparts that help the insect feel, taste, and also manipulate its food
- Bugscope Team sometimes it is not an insect; spiders have palps as well.
- Teacher Okay. It is time for us to sign out. Thanks so much! We really enjoyed it!
Bugscope Team yay!
- Bugscope Team Thank You for working with us today!
- 1:04pm
- Guest Thank you for eveything especially for your time.
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-096
- Guest Thank you for letting us see these insect. It was really fun. Bye
- Guest thank you for leting me see the bugs and insects
- Student Thanks,for all the information about the bugs!!!!! Thanks from Mya and Nakayla
- Bugscope Team Bye Tony. Thank You!
- Student THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I loved all the pictures. You really increase my mind on the bugs and other things. Now I know what things look up close.
- Guest Thank you for all the insects
- Bugscope Team Thank you, Mya and Nakayla, and Kamryn.
- Bugscope Team Thank you, A'nasia!
- Bugscope Team Thank you, Goku!
- Bugscope Team See you next year!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-096
- Bugscope Team that is your member page, below
- Bugscope Team see you!
