Connected on 2011-11-01 15:30:00
from Champaign, Illinois, United States
- 2:33 pm
- Bugscope Teamsample is pumping down
- Bugscope Teamas soon as the sample is pumped down we will start setup
- 2:43 pm
- Teacherhello - i
- TeacherI'm just getting set up - we won't start until our scheduled time of 3:30pm
- Bugscope TeamHello!
- Bugscope TeamI'm just getting set up as well...
- 2:49 pm
- 2:55 pm
- Bugscope Teamthis is the trapdoor the moth climbed out of once it was finished becoming a moth
- Bugscope Teamyou can see that it is lined with scales
- 3:00 pm
- Bugscope Teamthe door is to the right and down
- 3:06 pm
- 3:13 pm
- 3:18 pm
- 3:24 pm
- TeacherHello, we're dividing into groups now and should be ready to go in a few minutes
- 3:30 pm
- Bugscope Teamgreat
- Studenthello
- Bugscope TeamHello!
- Bugscope TeamWelcome to Bugscope!
- Studentwe are here
- Studenthello
- Studentsup
- Bugscope Teamthis is an ant
- Bugscope Teamit's tucked into a ball
- Student ah
- Bugscope Teamwho is going to be driving this afternoon
- Studentwhat part of the ant are we looking at SEM?
- Studentk
- Studentwhat is an ant?
Bugscope Teamit's a small insect that lives in colonies and is hated by all other insects
- Bugscope Teamants attack other insects, usually
- Studentthis probably isn't an ant
Bugscope Teamwhat do you think it is?
- Studentit might be a flea
Bugscope Teamnope
- Studentwhat is the triangular space that you can see?
Bugscope Teamthat is where the antenna is folded over
- StudentI could be lice
Bugscope Teamnope
- Studentitoucl be lice
- Studentbad spelling'\
- StudentAcually it probably is an ant
Bugscope Teamum Thank you for the vote of confidence
- StudentThis is a mosquito ommatidia
Bugscope Teamthis is another ant
- Bugscope Teamants are almost all female
- Bugscope Teamthe males, when you see them, have wings
- 3:35 pm
- Bugscope Teamokay who would like to drive the microscope?
- StudentWhat is the smallest specimen that you have scoped
Bugscope Teamyou mean an insect? or a bug? there are mites in here today, really cool
- Bugscope Teamand they are quite small
- Bugscope Teamthis is about 75 micrometers wide, quite small
- Bugscope Teamit's living on a tiny parasitic wasp
- Bugscope Teamthis is close to the smallest living thing besides bacteria and diatoms, etc. that we have seen in the 'scope
- Bugscope Teamthis wasp has a mite on its eye
- 3:41 pm
- Studentwoww
- TeacherHow do you prepare the insects for the microscope?
Bugscope Teamwe let them dry in a place that is not wet so they don't rot, and then we attach them to a stub with doublestick carbon on it. we also use silver paint to help give them a conductive pathway to ground. then we coat the whole sample stub with gold-palladium, just a few nanometers, using a sputter coater
- Bugscope Teamif someone would like to control the microscope please let me know
- StudentDoes that mean you can only view non-living organisms on your microscope?
Bugscope Teamyes otherwise they would have to hold their breath for a long time, and that is not nice
- Teacherso i guess the SEM is not good for imaging live specimen
- Bugscope Teamthe specimen chamber is under vacuum
- Studentwhat is the size of a stinger
Bugscope Teamthey can be all different sizes depending on what they are stinging. a stinger is a modified ovipositior
- 3:46 pm
- Studentwhat is a sputter coater?
Bugscope Teama sputter coater is a vacuum chamber that you can let argon gas into and run a charge through
- Bugscope Teamwhen current is running through argon it becomes a plasma and attacks the target (gold-palladium, today), eroding atoms of Au/Pd and raining them all over the sample.
- Studentcan we control the microscope
Bugscope Teamyes you now have control!
- Bugscope Teamyou can click on any of the presets, and you can change mag and focus as well as contrast/brightness
- Bugscope Teama $600,000 microscope you can control like a videogame
- Bugscope Teamthese are scales on the mosquito's proboscis
- StudentWhat are the scale like features we are looking at?
Bugscope Teamthey are scales, and they serve a number of functions. one is that because they fall off easily, if the mosquito flies into a spiderweb it can leave the scales behind and slip out. sometimes.
- Studentkjygrytuyuu92
- Bugscope Teamscales also likely work like feathers; they also provide both structural and pigment-derived colors, and they likely help with thermoregulation
- Studentil;
- Studentcan you give bug team the control
Bugscope Teamsure!
- 3:52 pm
- Bugscope Teambugs has control now
- Bugscope Teamnote that you can select from the presets, to the left
- Bugscope Teamthat is, you can choose another sample
- Bugscope Teamthe mosquitoes that bite are the females
- Bugscope Teammale mosquitoes do not bite
- Bugscope Teamthis is salt from a Wendy's restaurant
- Studentthe salt is cool
- Bugscope Teamit has a cool incised pattern that we think comes from an anticaking agent but really we do not know
- Bugscope Teammost salt is a boring cube
- StudentWhat are the bumps on the salt?
Bugscope Teamthose are a fine powder, and/or smaller cubes
- Studentp
- Bugscope Teamoh and a seta is a hair; the plural is setae
- StudentCan the bug hunters take control?
Bugscope Teamgot it!
- Studentof the microscope
- Bugscope TeamBug Hunters are now the supreme rulers
- 3:57 pm
- StudentHi can we look at the spider eye?
Bugscope Teamthere are two of them we can see now
- Bugscope Teamsorry they are kind of hard to see
- Bugscope Teamthey look like little domes
- StudentThat looks like a cactus.
Bugscope Teammost of the spider's setae are sensory
- StudentCan you please tell us what the hair like strands are?
Bugscope Teamthey are setae, and many are sensory -- touch, vibration, smell/taste, hot/cold
- Bugscope Teamsome spiders also have what are called 'urticating hairs' that make you inch
- StudentHow many eyes are in the image?
Bugscope Teamjust two
- StudentIs there a membrane on the spider eye?
Bugscope Teamyes and we cannot see through it with electrons
- StudentCan we have control
Bugscope Teamyou have it now!
- StudentThank you, can you please give control to Purple Thunder?
- Bugscope Teamthese setae are said to help the fruit fly sense windspeed and direction
- StudentWhat are the needle like strands
Bugscope Teamthose little bristles or setae are supposed to give the fruit fly information about windspeed and direction, but I don't think that is true
- Studentwhat are the hair-like things
Bugscope Teamthey are setae (see-tee)
- 4:02 pm
- Bugscope Teamthese are mechanosensory setae
- Bugscope Teamlike a cat or rat's whiskers
- Studentwhere do you find all your test subjects
Bugscope Teamwe hunt them down
- StudentWhat are the tiny particles on the eye?
Bugscope Teamsometimes we cannot tell; some are the shape of the eye, of course
- TeacherFor our last group, Mrs. Lisa, could we have control?
Bugscope TeamMrs Lisa now has control
- Bugscope Teaminsects and other similar arthropods have exoskeletons
Bugscope Teamif you have an exoskeleton, it is kind on like wearing armor, so you need those setae to stick through the armor and help you sense your surroundings
- Studenthow many lenses are there
Bugscope Teamthere can be 5000 or even more per eye
- Bugscope Teamthe mite here is obscured by that spine/spike
- Studenthat is the spike like things on the roach?
Bugscope Teamthose help the roach sense its environment as well, and also make it less easy to eat
- Studentwhat is the spike
Bugscope Teamit is likely a sensory spine/spike
- Bugscope Teamthis, now, is a scale from another insect
- Bugscope Teamon this fruitfly
- 4:07 pm
- Bugscope Teamthere are three more eyes called ocelli on the back of the head
- Bugscope Teamyou can see them now
- Studentdo insects need heat
Bugscope Teamthey need some heat to keep them active
- Studentthis is cool!
Bugscope Teamit's fun for us! of course we don't look at bugs all of the time
- Studentis the triangular part on the face it's nose?
- Bugscope Teamthe upside down triangle is a scale from another insect
- Bugscope Teammost insects do not have noses; they breathe through their spiracles and smell with chemosensory setae, often in their antennae but sometimes even on their feet
- Studentcould scope take control
Bugscope Teamgot it!
- Bugscope Teamthere are a lot of presets no one has looked at yet
- Bugscope Teamplease let me know if you are having trouble getting to any of them
- 4:12 pm
- Bugscope Teamwhen we use the microscope for Bugscope we purposely keep the sample far from the polepiece, where the electrons come from. if we were closer, we would get better resolution
- Studentcould we look at the plumose seta
Bugscope Teamhere comes!
- Bugscope Teamthat is wild looking
- Bugscope Teamyou might take the magnification down to see if you can figure out where you are
- Studentwhat are the strands on the body?
Bugscope Teamthose are microsetae, and they serve a different purpose
- Bugscope Teamthis is a trapdoor in a Mexican jumping bean
- Bugscope Teamactually the door itself is hanging down to the right
- Studentis this to trap bugs
Bugscope Teamno it is the place where a caterpillar transformed itself into a tiny moth
- Bugscope Teamone of the moths is also on the stub today
- Studentwhat is a thermoregulation
Bugscope Teamit is keeping your body temperature more or less constant so you don't overheat or get too cold
- 4:18 pm
- Bugscope Teambees can kill a large wasp, for example, by crowding around it so that it overheats and dies
- Studentwhy do electron microscopes take close up in black and white?
Bugscope Teamwe are using electrons rather than light, and the images come to us as signal, as gray scale.
- Bugscope Teamthe electrons are so small there is no light, just signal. if there is no light there is no color
- Bugscope Teamthe wavelengths of visible light are about 400 to 700 nanometers, and the electron beam we are using now is about 2.1 nanometers in diameter
- Bugscope Teamif we could see the true colors of these samples they would be silver because we coated the specimens with gold-palladium berfore putting them into the 'scope
- Studentthanks so much for letting us take turns using the microscope the session is coming to an end
Bugscope TeamThank You!
- Studentvery cool thanks again bye
- Bugscope Teamhttp://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-166
- Bugscope TeamBye! This below is your member page...
- StudentWe'll fill out the feedback survey. Thank you very much!! Lisa
- Bugscope TeamThank You, Lisa!
