Connected on 2008-01-15 10:45:00
from Park Ridge, IL, US
- 9:44 am
- Bugscope Teamsession enabled, rxl started, starting presets. 9:42AM.
- 9:50 am
- 9:57 am
- 10:03 am
- 10:14 am
- Bugscope Teampresets are done. ready for school to login.
- 10:21 am
- 10:26 am
- 10:31 am
- TeacherHi! This is Tony.
- Bugscope Teamhi tony!
- Bugscope Teamwelcome to bugscope
- Bugscope Teamwe are ready for you. i'm unlocking the session now.
- Bugscope TeamWhoa Hello!
- TeacherNow all we need are some students.
- Bugscope Team:)
- Bugscope TeamYeah we are ready to roll -- I was just messing with the 'scope and not paying attention to who might be online.
- Bugscope Teamwe had some cookies in the lab that were distracting us
- Bugscope TeamYou are welcome to drive around if you would like.
- TeacherPulvillus--what's that?
- 10:37 am
- Bugscope TeamThe pulvillus is the pad on the forearm (tarsus) of an insect that clings to the ceiling or to glass -- it
- Bugscope Teamis a sitcky pad.
- Bugscope Teamsticky
- Bugscope Teamthe individual setae on the pulvillus are called tenent setae.
- Bugscope TeamIt would be Latin as in the Spanish word tener.
- Bugscope Teamto hold or to have
- TeacherIs this preset #6?
- Bugscope Teamno delay here at all
- Bugscope Teamthe setae we see now on the fruit fly eye (this is not a preset) are helpful in gauging wind direction
- Bugscope Teamwith IE7 that is, sorry ignore that
- TeacherOr French - tenir.
- Bugscope Teamyeah Cool.
- 10:43 am
- Bugscope Teammaybe FF with XP
- Bugscope TeamHello all
- TeacherMrs. Smaha informed me yesterday that her class may not be here right at 10:45. She didn't say why, but she said that the kids will be paired up this time (to cut down on traffic) and they did write up some quesitons in advance.
Bugscope Teamexcellent, that is all fine with us. we are ready anytime.
- TeacherNow, I have a logistical question for you. I've been after my seventh grade teachers to sign up for a session. One of their issues is that they teach 3 - 4 sections a day, and they don't see how they could tie up your site for that much time during a school day. How have you handled that time of scenario?
Bugscope Teamthat is doable. we'd just need to make sure we all don't have other commitments that day. if you schedule a month in advance or more, then we should be alright. just go aheda and have the teacher sign up for sessions via the application, and we'll work it out.
- TeacherTYPE of scenario
- 10:48 am
- Bugscope Teamthis is the housefly, right in thje middle of the stub
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the haltere now. it is colllapsed
- TeacherThis is COOL.
Bugscope Teamwe think so too, thanks!
- TeacherReminds me of that movie FANTASTIC VOYAGE. Anybody old as I am who can remember that flick?
- Bugscope Teamthis is probably a female fly -- in the females the eyes are spaced far apart and in the male flies the eyes are often close together
- Bugscope TeamRaquel Welch.
- 10:53 am
- Bugscope Teamha!
- Bugscope Teami knew scott would remember raquel!
- Bugscope TeamI am not sure why males and female fly eyes are different
- TeacherI didn't remember the actors.
- TeacherI was just a kid then.
- Bugscope TeamIt's the Baryshnikov gene.
- Bugscope TeamScott's a savant for things like that ;)
- Bugscope TeamHi Annie!
- Bugscope TeamHi Scott!
- Bugscope Teami grew up watching movies like terminator and aliens, so i'm into out space, not inner space...
- Bugscope TeamAnnie are you coming in today, later?
- Bugscope Teamyup
- Bugscope TeamAnnie the other thing -- are you geting any delay in typing text, here, in Firefox?>
- Bugscope TeamNow mine is fine...
- Bugscope Teamnope, no delay
- TeacherKids should be here soon.
- Bugscope TeamI think Chas is coding away and fixed something.
- Bugscope Teamwe are ready for the kids!
- 11:01 am
- Bugscope Teamopened a tab to gmail, now there is lag!
- Bugscope Teami'm going to close my IE7 session now.
- Bugscope Teamack, sorry, ignore that
- 11:08 am
- Bugscope TeamDr Clishem and Ms Smaha how are things going there?
- Bugscope TeamHello! Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope TeamHi guys!
- Bugscope TeamPlease let us know when you have questions about what you see, or anything else...
- Bugscope Teamthis is the eye -- the compound eye -- of a housefly.
- Guestwhat is this
- Bugscope TeamWe're looking at a compound eye right now
- Bugscope Teamthis is the eye of a housefly.
- Bugscope Teamof a housefly
- Bugscope Teamthis is a fly eye, it is a compound eye
- Bugscope Teamif you zoom in you'll see all the small parts in the eye
- Bugscope Teamit is likely a female because male fly eyes are often close together and those of females are often spaced further apart.
- Guestwhat is a compound eye?
Bugscope Teammany insects have compound eyes, they are visual organs used for sight. compound eyes consist of thousands of ommatidia, which are the individual eye facets. zoom in to seem them better.
- Bugscope TeamAlthough I don't know why the boys and girls have different eyes.
- Bugscope Teamthe individual facets of the eye are called ommatidia, and they are the reason it is called a compound eye -- because it has many lenses.
- Bugscope Teamthe Baryshnikov gene
- Bugscope Teamfor close-set eyes
- Bugscope TeamOhhhh, I get it now!
- Bugscope Teama simple eye is more like what we have
- Guestwhat is your favorite specimen
- Bugscope TeamIlike mites and ticks
- Studentthis is very interesting
- Bugscope TeamI like earwigs because they often have mites, but we have no earwigs today
- 11:13 am
- TeacherSome of our students are losing the chat box on their screen. Why is that?
Bugscope TeamThey had it and it went away, or they never saw it? If the latter, perhaps they don't have enough screen space. You can try making more by hitting F11 to go to full-screen (if on Windows)
- Bugscope Teamalso crustaceans have compoiund eyes as well
- Guesthave you ever look at a animal brain
Bugscope TeamWe usually don't look at soft tissues in Bugscope sessions.
- Bugscope TeamI like to look at mosquitos and other parasites---they have very interesting adaptations to a parasitic lifestyle
- Bugscope Teamsorry ms. smaha about the chat problem. do the kids have the browser maximized?
- Bugscope Teamwhen we look at animal brains we usually do light microscopy or transmission electron microscopy.
- TeacherThey saw the chat box, then it went away.
Bugscope TeamSo is there just a blank spot there with no text now? I haven't heard of this happening before
- Bugscope Teamcan you ask them to hit F5 (function key), that refreshes the screen
- Bugscope Teamnow we can see individual ommatidia up close
- StudentThis is very COOL
- Guestwhere do you get your specimens?
Bugscope TeamFrom schools, from people who know us, from friends and family, and occasionally from the entomology department here at the University of Illinois
- Guestwhat do you usually look at
- GuestWhy do you use gold dust on your specimins?
Bugscope TeamWe coat the specimens with a thin layer of gold palladium to make them easier to image. The gold and the palladium have more electrons that the plain specimen does...so when the specimen is coated with gold palladium there are more electrons available to create the image
- StudentTHis looks like a honeycomb and beehive
Bugscope Teamyes, sometimes the compound eyes look like honeycombs, that's because of the octogonal shape
Bugscope TeamThe shape is very efficient (more so than perfectly round circles) because there is no wasted space between compartments. That's likely the reason you see it frequently
- Bugscope Teamif the eye was broken we would see that it is crystal-like in cross-seciton
- Bugscope Teamwe collect what we can and people send us samples as well
- Bugscope TeamHi Cate!
- Guesthave you ever seen anything that could cure a disease
- StudentHas anyone ever tried to steal a gold coated bug?
Bugscope TeamThe coating of gold is so thin that it's probably worth less than a penny, so no. The gold "targets" we use to get gold from to put on the bugs are fairly valuable though, although we haven't had any problem with them going missing
- Bugscope TeamWe coat our samples with gold-palladium to make them conductive.
- 11:18 am
- Studentwhat is your favorite bug that you have ever looked at
- StudentTHis is very cool
- Bugscope TeamTommy sometimes we look at drugs or drug delivery systems.
- GuestWhat is the biggest thing you ever looked at?
Bugscope Teamwell, the miscroscope has a chamber that is small, so we can't look at big bugs really. the idea is rather to look at really smalls things, even smaller than bugs!
- Guestwhy do you put gold dust on your specimins
Bugscope Teamthe gold dust is on the bugs so that when the electron beam inside the scope hits the bugs with the gold on it, small parts of the dust (electrons) fly off and are collected by the camera. this is how the image is acquired
- StudentHow long did you have to go to school to be a scientist?
Bugscope TeamI went to four years of undergraduate college, and this is my fifth year of graduate schoole
- Studenthave you ever looked at a living bug
- Studentwhat is the most interesting diesiese you have looked at
- Bugscope Teamthat was a long answer
- Bugscope Teamwe sputter atoms of gold and palladium alloy onto the sample to make it conductive so that the electrons will come out of the sample and not go into it and stay
- GuestHow old were u when u wanted to be a scintest?
Bugscope TeamI decided that I wanted to be an entomologist when I was a senior in high school
- Guestcool
- Guesthow many jerms did you see this year
Bugscope Teamwe see lots and lots of germs -- like bacteria -- TNTC. That means Too Numerous To Count.
- StudentWhat's the most interesting thing that you have looked at on a microscope
- Bugscope TeamI decided in college that I had better take Biology or I might end up being an English teacher.
- StudentAt what age did you want to become a scientist?
- Studentthat is very intesting
- StudentWhy are the pictures black and white?
Bugscope TeamColor is a feature of the difference between how different pigments reflect different wavelengths of light. We're not using light, we're using electrons. There is no good analog to color when using electrons, so we see only a single-color "intensity" signal
- Studenthave you ever looked at a living bug
Bugscope Teamyeah we have looked at a Monarch butterfly chrysalis, and the butterfly hatched after the session
- StudentWhat other kinds of microscopes do you use?
Bugscope TeamWe have light microscopes, scanned probe microscopes, and electron microscopes. There are many variations...
Bugscope Teamwe have electron microscopes, atomic force microscopes, light microscopes, and also a near field scanning scope.
- Studentwhere do you get your specimens
- StudentWhy do scientists look in microspoes, what is the purpose?
Bugscope Teamwe try to look at things that we can't normally see with the naked eye, like with insects, there are a lot of cool things to look at!
- 11:23 am
- Guestwhat is the specimen you don't like
- Studenthave you ever looked at a living bug
Bugscope TeamOne time I looked at a beetle larva that was not quite dead yet. I was lucking it didn't explode
- StudentWhat kind of things do you like to look at?
- GuestHave you ever looked at animals organs
- StudentHow old are u going to be when you get to your carrier
Bugscope TeamAnnie is closer to starting a career than I am, but probably late 20's as a ballpark figure
Bugscope TeamThat is a good question. I hope to graduate next summer, when I am 27. I really really hope
- Studenti think this is a great website and i like it alot
Bugscope Teamthank you!
- Studenthow many protists do you look@
- StudentWhat is this bug?
- Guestdo you take turns looking at specimens
- Studentwhat is the biggest thing u look at?
- Studenthave you ever dissected an insect and then looked at its insides
Bugscope TeamWe don't typically do this with an SEM because the insides are very soft and would have to be tediously prepared otherwise they'd just look like mush
- TeacherIn the student window, the chat area is getting sqëezed. They are not seeing their questions.
Bugscope Teamyou may be at a small resolution? if you can, change the screen res to 1280x1024, that is the recommended minimum
- Bugscope TeamHere we teach students to use the microscopes to do their own research, and they do all kinds of different things.
- StudentWhos Annie?
Bugscope TeamAnnie is one of the bugscope team logged on with us today. She's a Ph.D student in the Entomology department here at UIUC
- Guestwhat is the most intersting specimen
- Studentcan i look at the joint
- Studenthave you ever gone to places to collect specimens
Bugscope TeamI did in highschool when I took an insect collection course!
Bugscope TeamOoh me! Me! I have been on many collecting trips. I have been to Costa Rica, Mexico, and all over the US.
- Guestwhat is this bug? is it a fly.i want to look at the wing!!!
- Bugscope TeamThat should have been lucky a few answers below...I can't type!!!
- StudentWho do you give the information to after you have written it down?
- Studentwhy is it so hairy
- StudentWhen did you become a scientist
Bugscope TeamI started in college and never stopped
- Guestwhos chas?
Bugscope TeamI'm part of the bugscope team. I'm also a graduate student at the University of Illinois in engineering
- Guesthow many hairs are on a spider
- Guestwhat is your favorite specimen
- Guestyour cool
- Bugscope Teamthere are thousands of tiny hairs (setae) on a spider
- Studentwhat is your favorite food?
Bugscope Teamdefinitely not bugs!
- Studentare the hairs cilia or some kind of sensory thing
Bugscope TeamThe hairs, which we call setae, help the insect to sense its environment. Some setae are mechanosensory, meaning that they sense touch. Some setae are chemosensory, and they allow the insect to smell or taste things.
- Guestthat is so cool
- Bugscope TeamMs. Smaha, if you are near a phone and need to call me, I'm at 217-265-8164. I'll try to help with the screen resolution
- Studentwhat was the largest speciman you have observed
- StudentHow old were you when you came to the college to start your science major?
Bugscope TeamI was ~18 when I started my undergraduate, I think that's pretty typical. I took a year off and worked between undergrad and grad school
Bugscope TeamI was 18. I got a biology undergraduate degree before I went to graduate school
- StudentDo you look at blood?
Bugscope TeamIt's a lot easier to look at blood with a light microscope than the electron microscope we're using now. So no, very rarely
- 11:28 am
- Bugscope TeamI was 1when I went to college, but I took my time getting my degree
- Bugscope Team17
- Bugscope Teamnot 1!]
- Studentdo just look @ bugs
Bugscope TeamThe microscope gets used for many other things than bugs. Micro and nano-tech stuff, geological things, manufactured crystals, all kinds of things
- Studentwhen did you start getting interested in being a scientist
Bugscope TeamI think I always liked to learn about nature. As a kid I caught frogs and beetles and lizzards and all that kind of stuff. And so, I think I must have become interested in science when I was a litle kid.
- Bugscope TeamChas started working on bugscope when he was 15.
- StudentWhat is your favorite protist?
- Studenthow long have you been looking at these kind of things
- Student what is the biggest bug you have looked at
Bugscope TeamIn my research, I have looked at beetles that are 2-3 inches long. But I only look at parts of the beetle, not the whole thing.
- Guestcan you look at big things like snakes
Bugscope Teamin this microscope you cannot image anything more than 50 mm across or tall
Bugscope Teammaybe pieces of snakes, though i have never seen one in the 'scope
- Studentthat looks interesting
- Studentwhat are the spikes for
- Studentwhat are the spikes on this and what is this
- Guestdo you look at intestins
- StudentWhat is this thing?
- GuestWhat is your favorite protist to look at
- Bugscope Teamthis is a mold spore!
- Studentwhy is there spikes on it(sorry)
Bugscope Teamthe spikes, i think, make it easier to stick to things
- Studenthow does mold give u allergies
- Studentwhat was your favorite speciman you looked at?
- StudentWhat are the little nubby things on the mold that we are looking at??
- Bugscope TeamYou can see that the spikes help the mold spore stick to things.
- Bugscope TeamLike pollen grains...
- Guestcan we look at fur?
- StudentDo you look at animal ears?
- Bugscope TeamYou could look at fur if we had it in the 'scope today.
- StudentWhat are we looking at?
- Guestwhos cate? ????
- StudentDo you prepare your own specimens?
Bugscope Teamyes, we take the specimens schools send us, prep them, and put them into the microscope, which is a vacuum
- Bugscope Teamthis is a mold spore, up close
- Bugscope Teamcool image!
- StudentWhat are we looking at?
- StudentDo you look at eyes
Bugscope Teamwe have fruit fly eye as a preset in the scope today
- Bugscope Teamwe work with people who work with brain tissue, and people who grow nerve cells on slides, and people who grow fibroblasts, and people who put genes in bacteria...
- 11:33 am
- Studentoh that is very interestin g
- Guestthat's cool i want to look at a butterfly!!!
- Bugscope Teama long time ago I looked at rabbit corneas.
- Student\
- Studentcool!!!!!!!!!
- Guestdo you think butterfly wings are cool
Bugscope Teamthey can be cool to look at, but it is hard to keep them from charging
- StudentDo you look at protits
- Studenti think that this is a great learning eperience
Bugscope TeamThanks Matt and Luke...we hope it is a great learning experience!
- Bugscope Teaman ophthalmologist was testing a laser to see how it shaped the cornea
- Studenthave you ever looked at the dust on a butterflys or moths wings
- StudentHave you ever lokked at liccce
- StudentDo you look at protists?
- Bugscope Teamyes we have looked at lice
- Studentwhy is there holes in the butterfly wings
Bugscope TeamThe holes are there to reduce the weight of the wings. They need to be a very efficient shape to provide lots of lift while not weighing the insect down
- Guestdo you watch animal planet to get ideas
- Guesthave you ever at liese
- Studenty r ther lines on the wing?
- Bugscope Teamthe holes make the scales lighter in weight
- Studentdo you enjoy your job
- StudentI think this is really great that you are spending time for us?
Bugscope TeamThanks. We enjoy getting to share our knowledge with classes and give them access to something that probably no highschool has
- Studentwhat is this weird bug(if it is one)
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of the most fun parts of our job -- doing this
- Studentyou guys are really smart with looking at all these things
- Studentthat is cool
- Guestwhats your favorite bug
Bugscope TeamMy favorite insects are longhorned beetles....that is what I am studying for my PhD
- StudentDo you look at brain
- Bugscope Teamseveral groups we work with study brain tissue
- Bugscope Teamthis is a roly poly
- Guestyour coooooooooooooool
- Guestdo you like your job
- Studentwhat is the biggest speciman you have observed
Bugscope TeamLarge moths, grasshoppers, and beetles are about the largest we've fit on the stub. The stub is only 2 inches in diameter, and our lowest magnification available is ~30x so you can't see the whole thing at once when it's that large
- Bugscope Teamlonghorned beetles often have mites on them as well
Bugscope Teamand sometimes pseudoscorpions!
- Bugscope Teameven a cicada is large for this microscope
- Studentchas when where you interesed in being a scientist
Bugscope TeamI have pretty much always wanted to do science. I grew up familiar with it because my dad is a professor, and got involved with Bugscope when I was 15 and have been doing lots of it ever since
- 11:38 am
- StudentDo you have any other subjects at college?
- Studentwhy did you want to be a scientist
- Studentwhats ur favorite specimen to look at?
- Guesthave you ever looked look at food
- StudentWhy do you want to be a scientist
Bugscope TeamI really like discovering new things, especially about the beetles that I study.
- Bugscope TeamI studied English and for the first several years I did this I edited scientific papers as well
- Guesthow many bugs have u killed
Bugscope TeamLots...probably thousands...that sounds really bad, doesn't it?
- StudentHey thanks chas for answering our questions?
Bugscope TeamNo problem, I'm doing my best to keep up
- Guestwhy are intersted in scienc
- Studentwhere do you get your specimans from
Bugscope TeamWe get specimens from Bugscope participants sometiems. Other times we get them from entomology students who don't want their collections.
- Guestcan u look at food?
Bugscope TeamYou certainly can
- Studentyour pretty sweet
- Guestgfdjghf
- Studentdo you look at animal tears?
Bugscope TeamThe specimens have to be sealed in an air-tight vacuum chamber while they're being imaged which causes all the moisture to evaporate. For that reason we don't usually get to look at liquids, or wet things. That's why bugs are great, because they have hard-dry exoskeletons so we don't have to do any complex drying steps
- Studentsorry for th question mark chas!
- Bugscope Teamwe can and od look at food
- Guestyour cool
- Guestanswer
- Studentluky
- Studentchas that must be fun having a dad as a proffeser
- Studentgtg
- Guestthaks for answering our
- Studentthank you for our time
- Studenttahnks everyone bye!!
- Studentthis was great
- Bugscope TeamThank You!
- Bugscope Teamthank you students, you were great!
- Studentthank you for answering
- Studentthank you for every thing chas and chas 2
- Studentseeing this stuff was great
- Bugscope TeamGlad you guys have enjoyed!
- 11:43 am
- TeacherHi folks . . . This is TONY . . . The kids had to bolt to lunch. We got squeezed by the schedule. The kids want to know if they can still do this when they go home. We said that they could go to the web site without the chat.
Bugscope Teamtony, hi, the session information is SAVED online, images, chat, everything. just tell the students to go to: http://bugscope.itg.uiuc.edu/members/2007-079
- TeacherOne more thing - What is the longest time period you could go with a session. 90 minutes? 2 hours? This would be something I could take back to my 7th grade teachers.
Bugscope Teamtony, you can do a long session, 2-3 hours even, but we'd need at least a month notice.
- Bugscope Teamtony, sorry about the resolution problem, we had some previous session that were 1024x768 and we didn't get complaints. but maybe we should require 1280x1024 from now on?
- TeacherWe changed it to 1280 x 960, and it looked fine.
Bugscope Teamawesome!
- Bugscope TeamGood Deal Laurie.
- Bugscope Teamsmaha, if you schedule a long session 2-3 hours, make sure to fill out the application at least a month in advance.
- Bugscope TeamI am sorry at the very end I got a call and had to drop out
- TeacherFrom now on, we'll make sure the resolution is set appropriately for the kids.
Bugscope Teamokay, and we'll try to note that on the website somewhere. 1280x960 is a common widescreen (laptop) resolution.
- 11:50 am
- Bugscope Teamsmaha, did you get the members page link?
- Bugscope Teamthe link with all the chat and images from this session, that you can give to your students?
- Bugscope Teamthe link is: http://bugscope.itg.uiuc.edu/members/2007-079
- Bugscope Teamwe ready to close the session?
- Bugscope Teamgood session everyone
- Bugscope Teamrxl stopped
- Bugscope Teamsession disabled
- Bugscope Teamsession finished.
- Bugscope Teamgoodbye!
