Connected on 2011-11-11 12:00:00
from Morris, New Jersey, United States
- 10:50 am
- Bugscope Teamsample is in chamber and pumping down
- Bugscope Teamalmost ready to turn on the electron beam
- 10:55 am
- Bugscope Teamlooks good so far. back in a few...
- 11:14 am
- 11:20 am
- 11:27 am
- 11:32 am
- 11:38 am
- Bugscope TeamHello!
- Bugscope TeamWelcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope TeamLooking for bacteria right now.
- 11:43 am
- 11:49 am
- Bugscope Teamwe are ready to go!
- Bugscope TeamSCI5!
- Bugscope TeamHello!
- TeacherHi Scott! We're looking forward to seeing the samples in a few minutes. Do you have a favorite?
- 11:55 am
- Bugscope Teamthis is the centipede, which is super tiny but looks just like an adult
- Bugscope Teamyou can see its compound eye, middle rightside of the screen
- Bugscope Teamand its antennae
- Bugscope Teamnow you can see the base of the antenna, and a bit of the eye
- Bugscope Teamha yeah!
- Bugscope Teamthe compound eye!
- Teachercan you see what we see?
Bugscope Teamyes!
- Bugscope TeamI just made the image brighter
- Bugscope Teamthe large thing is the antenna
- Bugscope Teamhope you don't want to count its legs
- Bugscope Teamthe centipede has sharp little fangs just below its face
- 12:00 pm
- Bugscope Teamyou can click on any of the presets you see on the lefthand screen
- Bugscope Teamif you click on the lefthand arrow that screen will pull into the center
- TeacherI'm glad you made it brighter because I think I over-adjusted the contrast!
Bugscope Teamit takes a little getting used to, and it is difficult when feedback is delayed
- Bugscope Teamlet us know whenever you have questions about anything
- TeacherI have students coming in so I'll be back in contact in a few minutes
Bugscope Teamtotally cool
- Bugscope Teambacteria playing tug of war in a biofilm matrix
- 12:06 pm
- Bugscope Teamyellowjacket head, now
- Bugscope Teamback to your favorite!
- Bugscope Teamyou can see the fangs pretty well
- Bugscope Teamsuper sharp
- TeacherThat's true! A great place to start. We would love to take a closer look at the fangs!
- Bugscope Teamlooks like you are doing quite well
- Bugscope Teamthey are much like spider fangs
- Bugscope Teamwe cannot see a poison pore at the tip, which is just out of view
- 12:11 pm
- Bugscope Teamthe tiny things that look like hairs are called setae (see-tee)
- TeacherIs it true that the total magnification of the EM is 3 million X?
Bugscope Teamsome of the newest ones can do that
- Bugscope Teambut if you try to go that high you have to have something to look at
- TeacherWhat is the total magnification of this microscope?
Bugscope Teamwe can go to a million x, but for research-quality (high quality) images we can go no higher than about 250,000x
- TeacherThat's it! What is it?
- TeacherWe would like to know what the what object is on the right/center of screen?
Bugscope Teamthis? It looks like a piece of a plant, with plant fibers
- Bugscope Teamit's moving
- Bugscope Teamthe electron beam makes it shimmy a bit
- TeacherThanks. We saw a clip today that showed how slides are prepared for the microscope. Are all of our insects coated in gold?
Bugscope Teamthey are coated with gold-palladium, which is finer than gold alone
- TeacherWe also wanted to know what the cost of preparing a slide might be.
Bugscope Teamum we charge $7 to coat a sample
- 12:16 pm
- Bugscope Teamdid you watch the clip on this site?
- Bugscope Teamthere
- Bugscope Teamis a video of Josie prepping a sample
- TeacherI can send you the YouTube link later.
- Bugscope Teamcool
- TeacherQ: How can the fiber be moving if it is coated in gold/palladium?
Bugscope Teamthe Au/Pd makes it conductive, but if it is loose and small the electron beam can still knock it around
- Bugscope Teamif we did not coat the samples, they would charge up with electrons, and they would not look good -- we would get nasty warped-looking images
- Bugscope Teamthis is the head of the mealworm pupa
- Bugscope Teamthese things creep me out when they move
- TeacherEach student raised a larva to adulthood - we weren't able to see them this close!
- 12:21 pm
- Bugscope Teamcool!
- Bugscope Teamthe beetle is forming inside
- Bugscope Teamall insects, as adults, have six legs, a head, a thorax, and an abdomen
- Bugscope Teambut as larvae and pupae they don't always follow those rules
- Bugscope Teamthis is the super tiny orb weaver spider
- Bugscope TeamI broke a lot of legs and its palps off so we could see its eyes and chelicerae
- Bugscope Teamthe fangs are at the tips of the chelicerae
- Bugscope Teamthe fangs are pointed right at each other
- Bugscope Teamthey are curved inward, but you see a lot of dried fluid there that is obscuring them
- TeacherIt looks like there is something in its fangs. What is it?
Bugscope Teamit is mostly dried fluid, maybe venom
- 12:27 pm
- Bugscope Teamthe thing that is glowing did not get well coated, and it is also a bit loose, so it is charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Teamif you think about it, a lot of what we see here looks like broken bits of wax
- Bugscope Teamwhen insects and arthropods like spiders die, they may throw up, and then its hard to see their moutharts
- Bugscope Teamspiders have lots of setae that help them sense vibration
- Bugscope Teamthose are two big sugar crystals, and in the background are lots of tiny salt crystals
- Bugscope Teamthe salt is from a Wendy's restaurant, and it has this cool-looking incised pattern
- TeacherWe placed our live spider in the freezer - do you think it would throw up?
Bugscope Teamsometimes they do
- Bugscope Teamspiders are difficult because much of their body is soft
- Bugscope Teammost insects have a relatively hard shell around them -- the exoskeleton
- Bugscope Teamspiders have the cephalothorax, which is hard, but the abdomen is soft and shrivels when it dies
- 12:32 pm
- TeacherWhat is biofilm?
Bugscope Teamsome bacteria exude a polysaccharide matrix that resembles a gel, and they live within it
- Bugscope Teamthe biofilm protects them, so when you try to wash your food they do not always get washed away
- TeacherIs it a waste product?
Bugscope Teamno it is a gel that they live and swim around in
- TeacherWhat are we looking at here?
- Bugscope Teamthat is the yellowjacket putting two of its tarsi in opposition
- Bugscope Teamlike a fist bump
- Bugscope Teamthe tarsi are the last five or so segments of a leg
- Bugscope Teamsee the claws?
- Bugscope Teamthe little setae we see help the yellowjacket feel what is touching it, like cat or rat whiskers
- Bugscope Teamyou can see some web there, from a spider, perhaps
- Bugscope Teamthe hook like thing is one of the claws
- 12:37 pm
- Bugscope Teamfly head
- Bugscope Teamyou can see its compound eye, and it sponging mouthparts to the right, a bit dried
- Bugscope Teamon top of its head, from this view, you see one of the antennae, which has two portions
- Bugscope Teamthere is a branched, or aristate, portion, and there is a also a pad portion
- TeacherRegarding the setae, does that mean that the yellowjacket has nerve endings on its exoskeleton?
Bugscope Teamthe nerve endings are inside -- the setae are attached, through the cuticle (exoskeleton) to the nerves
- Bugscope Teamwe have skin with nerve endings in it, but insects have a shell and must use those hairs to help sense their environment
- Bugscope Teamsome of the setae are mechanosensory (touch), some are chemosensory (smell, taste), and some are thermosensory (hot/cold)
- Bugscope Teamthis is the aristae portion of the antenna. the lower portion has the Johnston's organ in it. That helps the fly sense up and down and wind currents.
- 12:42 pm
- Bugscope Teammany flying insects also have three simple eyes on the top of the head that help them stay oriented with the sun and thus help keep them from getting lost
- Bugscope Teamthe simple eyes on the top of the head, to the left here, are called ocelli.
- Bugscope Teamthat was an ocellus
- Bugscope Teamthere it is
- Bugscope Teamit looks like a spider eye
- Bugscope Teamthere are three
- Bugscope Teamusually
- Bugscope Teamwe just don't see all of them
- Bugscope Teamthe tiny hairs are called microsetae, and they are not sensory
- Bugscope Teamthey may help with thermoregulation
- TeacherIs it possible to see the mouth parts on this specimen?
Bugscope Teamthey are kind of shriveled, but yes
- Bugscope Teamkind of like a muscular sponge
- Bugscope Teamit is usually wet and sticky
- Bugscope Teamthis kind of fly spits up on its food and sucks up what dissolved
- 12:48 pm
- Bugscope Teamit's kind of like how spiders eat, but they inject venom into their prey that dissolve the inner organs, which they then suck up like a milkshake
- Bugscope Teamthese are the sponging mouthparts
- Bugscope Teamnow we are looking at nanoscale particles called brochosomes
- Bugscope Teamthe micron bar reads 2 microns, which is generally the length of a bacterium
- Bugscope Teambrochosomes are often about 400 nanometers in diameter
- TeacherQ: What type of fluid do flies throw-up?
Bugscope Teamit's saliva -- a digestive fluid
- 12:53 pm
- TeacherThey remind us of pollen
- Bugscope Teamthey are really beautiful
- Bugscope Teamwhen we use the microscope for Bugscope we do not have the capacity to resolve as well as when we use it for research
- Bugscope Teamwhen we use the microscope for research, we take the sample very close to the polepiece, which is where the electron beam comes from.
- Bugscope Teamif we had these samples that close, we would not be able to go to low magnification to see whole insect
- Bugscope Teamthese are the two sets of palps
- TeacherHow old are these samples? Since they are coated in gold/palladium, can you use them over and over?
Bugscope Teamthey are a few months old
- Bugscope Teamwe never re-use samples because we do not want one school to be seeing the same samples someone else has already looked at
- Bugscope Teambut also, the samples actually do not last very long once they are sputter coated; they rot quickly
- TeacherQ about the microscope: How are the electrons stripped away from atoms (which atoms) for use in the SEM?
Bugscope Teamthere is a very high voltage going through the filament, or the emitter
- 12:58 pm
- Bugscope Teamthe emitter is a cathode, and below it is an anode that pulls the electrons away at the same time they are being emitted from the cathode
- Bugscope Teamthe anode is the first component that makes the electron beam go in the direction we want it to
- TeacherWhat is a hamuli?
Bugscope Teamhamuli are the winghooks that bees and wasps use to connect the fore- and hindwings when they fly
- Bugscope Teamugh I am afraid my explanation was so long that it did not go through
- Bugscope Teambees and wasps have four wings, and when they fly they hook the two wings on each side together so they have essentially two wings in flight
- 1:04 pm
- Bugscope Teamthe high-energy electron beam knocks secondary electrons out of the coating on the surface of the sample, and we collect those as signal, which is in grayscale...
- TeacherThank you so much for allowing us to participate! We enjoyed communicating with you and controlling the SEM!
Bugscope TeamThank You!
- Bugscope Teamhttp://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-089
- Bugscope Teamthat is your member page
- TeacherWhy all all SEM images in black and white?
Bugscope Teamelectrons are super small, smaller (obviously) than atoms, and they are much smaller than the wavelengths of light. but the answer is that when the electron beam hits the sample, or the conductive coat on the surface of the sample, it knocks sedcondary electrons out of the coating, and those electrons are what we collect, as signal.
- Bugscope Teamthere is the answer I'd been typing earlier
- Bugscope TeamRobin and Jeannie are you still there?
- Bugscope Teamshutting down
- Bugscope Teamthank you, everyone!
