Connected on 2007-03-20 12:45:00 from San Anselmo, California , USA
- 12:11pm
- Bugscope Team hey guys
- Bugscope Team hey alex
- Bugscope Team Alright now. Just waiting for the vacuum.
- Bugscope Team two more tenths
- Bugscope Team it's taking its time
- 12:16pm
- Bugscope Team almost ....
- Bugscope Team noo not the butterfly wing!
- Bugscope Team what's wrong with it?
- Bugscope Team oh... that
- Bugscope Team its not happy
- 12:24pm
- Bugscope Team okay cHas wants the 'scope now for a sec
- Bugscope Team that's a pretty nasty looking beetle head
- 12:29pm
- Bugscope Team chas: one drawback to the new IE "video" mode is that the cursor constantly flashes the wait icon during each image download. we'll need to see if that can be avoided (maybe put the video in an iframe?)
Bugscope Team I only saw that in IE6, not IE7
- 12:36pm
- Bugscope Team Hi guys!
- Bugscope Team Hi students! We're still getting setup here
- Bugscope Team Hi Jill!
- Bugscope Team Hi Jill, we are still collecting some last few preset, we'
- Bugscope Team we'll be ready in a few minutes
- Teacher Hi. We are logging on.
- Bugscope Team hi guys!
- Bugscope Team Great. Your controls won't be active here until we're finished setting up the rest of the presets
- Bugscope Team the kids are welcome to ask as many questions as they like. we'll be able to start answering once we've finished setting up
- Bugscope Team hey tack
- 12:41pm
- Bugscope Team Cathy where is the house fly? Is it on this stub?
- Student hi, alex & chas
- Student the kids are going to ask a question now
- Bugscope Team no its not, it was kind of dirty
- Bugscope Team sorry
- Guest What is the highest magnification of the EM?
- Bugscope Team it all depends on the sample, and the way we setup the 'scope. for our session there probably sin't much to see above 20-40,000x
- Bugscope Team but I've used the microscope at up to 800,000x magnification
- Bugscope Team session is ready for you jill!
- Bugscope Team Okay you all should be able to drive the 'scope now.
- Bugscope Team We have the presets done.
- Bugscope Team One person at a time, though...
- Teacher Thanks. We'll start.
- Bugscope Team Be sure and let us know whenever you have questions.
- Bugscope Team we can also transfer the controls to one of the student's computers too, instead of rotating kids up to the one machine with control
- Bugscope Team This is one of the mondo bigboy legs of the Jerusalem cricket.
- Bugscope Team This is one of the joints.
- 12:46pm
- Bugscope Team there's some dirty stuck inbetween those spines there
- Bugscope Team The spines probably serve as protection; keep the big ol' dude from getting eaten.
- Bugscope Team And you can see a bunch of dirt here.
- Bugscope Team There could be some diatoms in there.
- Bugscope Team This is like being on another planet.
- Bugscope Team Image is coming and going here -- is it for you guys?
- Bugscope Team looks ok to me.
- Bugscope Team I am sitting at the microscope and have the original in front of me.
- Bugscope Team same
- Bugscope Team Mine just blinked on/off.
- Guest How do you prep. the specimens for the EM
- Bugscope Team We take the deceased insects and lay them on their backs onto sticky tape
- Bugscope Team Then they get coated with a thin layer of metal to make them conductive, a prerequisite for using them in the SEM
- Bugscope Team These samples we need only to dry, then stick on carbon tape, then use some silver paint to enhance conductivity, then sputter coat with gold/palladium.
- 12:51pm
- Bugscope Team We have a video on one of our websites that shows you how we prep the sample for bugscope: http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/training/
- Bugscope Team if you scroll down to "Preparing a sample for the SEM"
- Bugscope Team The sputter coating is the cool part -- you have a current going through argon, making it glow. The argon becomes a plasma that attacks a target of gold/palladium and knocks loose atoms of Au/Pd that then coat the sample.
- Bugscope Team Adjust could work here.
- Bugscope Team The sputter coater glows for the same reason neon signs glow.... but has a much different purpose
- Bugscope Team ah, cool this is a great preset
- Bugscope Team The image is dark. Here we go -- mosquito eye facets, called ommatidia.
- Bugscope Team We have looked at bugs that are almost the size of mites, and we have looked at mites, and of course we have looked at bacteria.
- Bugscope Team you guys know whats going on with the image?
- Bugscope Team no clue cathy
- Bugscope Team axis box might be having trouble keeping up
- Bugscope Team The mites are a couple of hundred microns across.
- Bugscope Team These ommatidia are dried, quite a bit.
- Bugscope Team Usually they are all swollen together.
- 12:56pm
- Guest What is the most interesting bug you have looked at?
- Bugscope Team If you take the mag down you will be able to see (to the NE) the antenna bases.
- Bugscope Team I like ticks, escpecially.
- Bugscope Team And we looked at a lacebug last week that had a cool body shape and detail.
- Bugscope Team especially, I should've said
- Bugscope Team Earwigs are almost always interesting because they have mites that live on them.
- Guest \
- Bugscope Team OOF.
- Bugscope Team OOF= out of focus
- Bugscope Team try adjusting the focus here
- Guest can you see atoms with the em?
- Bugscope Team With a TEM you can now see atoms. With an SEM you cannot.
- Bugscope Team You can with a very special Tranmission EM (TEM)
- Bugscope Team our TEM here has 2x the resolution of our SEM
- Bugscope Team which is typically how it goes. but your samples have to be cut very thin for TEM so you can't put whole bugs in like we have here
- Bugscope Team And only a few TEMs in the world will let you see atoms. We have a TEM (transmission electron microscope); when we want to see atoms we use an atomic force microscope (AFM). But that works much better at ultrahig vacuum.
- Bugscope Team ultrahigh, that is..
- 1:01pm
- Bugscope Team the claw!
- Guest
- Guest How long has the "Bugscope" project been going?
Bugscope Team I started working on it near when it started in 1997
- Bugscope Team 8 years at least.
- Bugscope Team Yeah as Chas says for TEM you image very thin samples, and the electron beam goes through them, analogous to the way a light microscope works.
- Bugscope Team scott has been on it from the beginning
- Bugscope Team 8 years this month. Chas was a lot shorter then and very competitive. He is still the latter but taller than me now.
- Bugscope Team Chas started when he was like 14 or 15.
- Bugscope Team I was a soph. in highschool
- Bugscope Team We have done a few hundred sessions.
- Bugscope Team all over the US and in some other countries
- Bugscope Team This interface is very new, though, and written mostly by Chas, with the benefit of his experience doing this.
- Bugscope Team jill, do you have any questions about driving the scope? how's it going?
- Bugscope Team that's a neat "fan" of setae on the left there
- Guest Why can you see smaller things with electrons than with light?
Bugscope Team The reason is that visible light has a property of wavelength. That wavelength is around 400-700nm wide
- Student things are going fine
- 1:06pm
- Student the updates are a little slow, of course
- Student with 16 computers!
- Student there are four of us acting as teachers
- Bugscope Team Electrons are smaller than light -- the wavelengths of visible light are 400 to 700 nm, and the electron beam can be 4 angstroms acorss.
- Bugscope Team across
- Bugscope Team even with fairly advanced techniques, you simply cannot probe objects much smaller than the wavelength
- Bugscope Team electrons are absolutely miniscule compared to the wavelength of light, but they themselves have a pseudo-wavelegth due to quantum mechanics
- Bugscope Team however their "wavelength" is about 1000 smaller than that of visible light, so we can probe things much much smaller
- Bugscope Team So we are scanning a narrow beam of electrons across the sample repeatedly, and we get secondary electrons back from the conductive coat on the surface of the sample that give us our image.
- Bugscope Team If we scan the beam across a large area we get a low mag image, and if we scan across a very small area we get a high mag image of that area.
- Guest If you put your finger under an EM by mistake, what would you see?
Bugscope Team can't possibley happen because this all occurs inside a ~1-foot diameter steel box inside of which all the air has been pumped out
- Bugscope Team This is all done in a vacuum.
- Bugscope Team So the electron beam doesn't bump into anything, like molecules of air.
- Bugscope Team Be sure to drive as much as you want -- that will add images to your database for later.
- Guest
- Bugscope Team well i guess you could always cut off your finger first, but I wouldn't want to do that
- Bugscope Team Ah ha.
- Bugscope Team i'm up for it
- Bugscope Team It would outgas for awhile
- Bugscope Team but if the safety interlocks weren't there, still probably not much. if you know what a van de graaff generater looks like, it should be doing about the same thing, sending a lot of spare electrons to you
- Bugscope Team you'd have to dry your finger in a desiccator to get it ready to image.
- 1:12pm
- Bugscope Team you can see those big club-shaped antennae on the beetle's head
- Bugscope Team sorry if you guys are occasionally getting "broken" images there. we're running up against a limitation in our video server here. not a big deal as it seems to be fairly intermittent
- Bugscope Team this is the distal side -- the bottom -- of the head
- Teacher Are the large objects on the ends of the antennae?
- Bugscope Team You can check them out if you want to take the mag up on them.
- Bugscope Team yeah, the "onion" looking things are the ends of the antennae that are much larger than the flexible part connecting to the head
- Student /
- Bugscope Team They have lots of chemoreceptors in them that allow the beetle to taste the air.
- Bugscope Team check out the very middle of those big structures, I think they may have tons of cool patterns inside
- Bugscope Team insects have hundreds of tiny hair-like structures called setae that are mechano- or chemoreceptors.
- Bugscope Team And some of the setae are not sensory, as well.
- Bugscope Team Some of the setae seem to be there to form patterns or add surface area.
- Guest o
- Bugscope Team This is the area of the mouth.
- Bugscope Team try using click to center to move to the lower left or lower right to see one of those antennae
- Guest Can you see colors with an EM?
- 1:17pm
- Bugscope Team No because we are thinner than color we cannot see it.
- Bugscope Team no, the detectors we use in the SEM don't sense the "wavelength" of the electrons, only how many of them hit it
- Guest
- Student
- Bugscope Team with light, it's the different wavelengths that get reflected or absorbed that produces colors
- Bugscope Team If you see colored electron micrographs they have been artificially colored.
- Guest
- Bugscope Team We do that sometimes.
- Bugscope Team but we can color the image afterwrods, based on elemental analysis, you may have seen some colored images on the bugscope site.
- Guest ]
- Student
- Bugscope Team Yeah that's right -- when we do elemental analysis we can color different elements different colors.
- Bugscope Team "artificially colored" usually means someone painted on the image in photoshop, similar to painting a B&W photograph
- Guest
- Guest )
- Bugscope Team /.
- Bugscope Team we're seeing a lot of mostly blank text from you guys... are you having any trouble w/ the chat there?
- Bugscope Team Now you can take the mag up if you want.
- Guest sorry
- Bugscope Team zoom in!
- Guest /
- Bugscope Team yeah this is cool
- Bugscope Team now you might want to try focus, and then zoom in some more
- Guest how would you prepare a specimen for a transmission EM?
- 1:22pm
- Bugscope Team there are lots of receptors here
- Guest Sorry about all of the blanks chas
Bugscope Team I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a problem! no big deal
- Guest sorry
- Bugscope Team For TEM we have to fix the sample using a combination of glutaraldehyde/paraformaldehye, in an isotonic buffer -- it's a long sequence -- and the sample eventually gets embedded in epoxy.
- Guest
- Guest ]
- Bugscope Team Very small samples embedded in epoxy that are cut using a diamond knife in an ultramicrotome to about 90 nm thick.
- Bugscope Team When they are cut that thin they float out onto water, where we can pick them up on a TEM grid that is 3.05 mm across.
- Guest How many schools have used bugscope??
Bugscope Team a couple hundred at least
- Bugscope Team from all around the world too!
- Bugscope Team Then they get stained using heavy metal stains like lead and uranium, and when that is all dry the grid goes into the 'scope...
- Bugscope Team This is the eye -- the compound eye.
- Guest How many fith graders have used bugscope?
- Bugscope Team 586
- 1:27pm
- Bugscope Team you could probably search on our bugscope website and find out. I believe there is an option to search or sort by grade level
- Bugscope Team We could try to figure that out from our logs; not really sure.
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.itg.uiuc.edu/
- Bugscope Team we can also let a student try driving the 'scope too if you want, right scot?
- Student
- Guest do you have any research projects using the E.M.?
Bugscope Team research is the vast majority of what we do here. bugscope is a side-project. we're part of the University of Illinois and we have geology, nanotechnology, entomology, mechanical engineering, the list goes on
- Guest
- Bugscope Team we get a lot of people wanting to use the SEM and TEM for their research projects
- Guest so cool
- Bugscope Team We train boatloads of grad students to do their own projects using the microscope. Cathy does all of the TEM and SEM trainings.
- Bugscope Team the beckman institute is a world class facility in science and technology.
- Bugscope Team scot helps me out when he can of course ^.^
- Bugscope Team lots of nano-tech, nano-fabrication though
- Guest
- Bugscope Team The grad students are in research groups we work with for years and years -- we see generations of students go through the lab.
- Guest )
- Guest
- Student how much does it cost to run the EM for an hour
- Bugscope Team you should try to focus here
- Bugscope Team $50/hour for people in the University. Industry is about $100, and with our help the industry rate is around $180.
- Guest
- 1:33pm
- Bugscope Team The service contract with the manufacturer of this 'scope is about $35,000 per year.
- Bugscope Team Cathy and I need to know when we can fix the 'scope and when we must call for service.
- Bugscope Team We do as much as we can here.
- Bugscope Team hey jill, try focus here
- Bugscope Team that's looking better! keep going
- Bugscope Team Getting better -- that's the right direction.
- Guest Could we do it again next year?
Bugscope Team sure, just fill out another application
- Bugscope Team Oh yeah.
- Bugscope Team You bet -- we will be glad to have you back next year.
- Bugscope Team better better better
- Student
- Guest 0
- Bugscope Team eyeball
- Student
- Bugscope Team of the jerusalem cricket you sent us
- Bugscope Team we're seeing all the facets of the compound eye as that repeating pattern
- Bugscope Team this is the eye of the Jerusalem cricket -- a superlarge dude for the microscope.
- Bugscope Team flies are more fun to look at because their eyes are much more complex since they rely on them more
- 1:38pm
- Guest How many lenses would be on this eye?
Bugscope Team it varies widely from insect to insect. ants live most of their lives underground and often have fewer than a hundred. flying insects rely on their eyes much more and often have what looks like thousands
- Bugscope Team check out the other scales -- the other preset
- Student
- Bugscope Team there are at least a thousand, I bet, between both eyes.
- Bugscope Team i'd feel bad for the guy that went and counted them
- Bugscope Team That's for some poor grad student to do -- really it's been done.
- Bugscope Team the real quesion is does the bug know how many it has
- Bugscope Team This is cool.
- Bugscope Team i see in the upper right i think what scott likes
- Bugscope Team 96 tears from 96 eyes
- Bugscope Team or 96 winks
- Bugscope Team the scales are analogous to feathers, and they are hard to prepare because they charge up with electrons.
- Bugscope Team images of scales are interesting because of the absolutely tiny size of the features. the scale itself is so small that it looks like dust, but it's composed of these amazingly features
- Guest whats the biggest bug that you ever looked at???
- Bugscope Team amazingly intricuit and tiny features, rather
- Bugscope Team we're at 23,000x right now, btw
- Bugscope Team I think the patterns we see are at least in part responsible for the colors we see.
- Guest cvg
- Bugscope Team intricate
- Bugscope Team the scale bar in the lower left of the image is showing 2 microns, or about 40x smaller than the width of a human hair
- Teacher This is going very well...the kids love it.what was the name of the website that shows the prep of the specimens?
- Bugscope Team 2 microns is the length of a bacterium
- Bugscope Team one of the rod-shaped bacteria
- Bugscope Team http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/training/
- Bugscope Team scroll down a ways
- Bugscope Team lots of videos
- Bugscope Team http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/training/esem-prep.mov is the precise link to that movie
- Guest bye bye all you admins. :-(
- 1:43pm
- Bugscope Team cya!
- Guest bye nice talkin to ya. peace
- Bugscope Team also check out the virtual microscope if you like.
- Bugscope Team laterz
- Bugscope Team bye i hope you guys had fun
- Guest thax so much! bye.
- Guest byebye see you
- Bugscope Team glad to have you on
- Teacher Our time is up. Thank you for a great experience. Let me know about the feedback you will need.
- Guest bi
- Bugscope Team Sure thing, we'll send an email
- Bugscope Team thanks jill, great job!
- Bugscope Team ben, is that you controllin'?
- Bugscope Team thats me
- Bugscope Team ill stop
- Bugscope Team no prob
- Bugscope Team ben, do you want to try controlling w/ the javascript video?
- Bugscope Team yes. my beta IE on my PC doesn't work though...i get the video but can't control. i'll go find another PC...hold on
- Bugscope Team i'll boot windoze down here to try too
- 1:49pm
- Bugscope Team oh, it's not your fault. it's my side. let me check quick
- Bugscope Team anyone there?
- Bugscope Team i see no chat, nothing
- Bugscope Team we are here
- Bugscope Team you don't see this?
- Bugscope Team i see that, but see no other chat
- Bugscope Team and it took forever for the left stuff to show up
- Bugscope Team this is my 3rd pc...bugscope crashed the others
- Bugscope Team (crashed IE on the others)
- Bugscope Team hmm, takes a copule refreshes down here
- Bugscope Team drive and c2c don't work here
- Bugscope Team so, I think there's a z-index issue with the controls using the javascript video
- Bugscope Team I need to check my CSS later and figure it out
- Bugscope Team ok
- Bugscope Team i'm going to stop typing on umair's totally disgusting sticky keyboard and go wash my hands
- Bugscope Team oh wait
- Bugscope Team lol
- Bugscope Team ehh
- Bugscope Team he uses hair prioduct
- Bugscope Team OK, I'm loggin' off
- 9:50am
