Connected on 2008-02-04 16:00:00 from Milwaukee, WI, US
- 2:56pm
- Bugscope Team hello I'm just setting up the session a little early
- Bugscope Team im working on presets righ tnow
- Bugscope Team right*
- Guest Don't mind me, I am just a teacher who stumbled onto the website and wanted to take a look at a live session
- Bugscope Team the actual live session starts at 4pm CST
- Guest Will I be able to stay on as a guest once the actual session starts?
- Bugscope Team yes, I just thought I would let you know, in case you wanted to make sure you were here for that
- Guest sounds good...thanks for the heads up
- Bugscope Team yeah no problem
- 3:01pm
- Bugscope Team hello gaye-lynn, I'm just setting up some presets early, did you have any problems?
- Teacher Just checking things out since Bernie will not be here today and I have not done this before.
- Bugscope Team all right, if you want, I can unlock the session for a little while and show you how to use the controlls
- Teacher Thank you...
- Bugscope Team so you should see an area in the lower right where you can pick a preset that we make ahead of the session that lets you jump to that area
- Bugscope Team you can also manually move the 'scope by using either of the navigation buttons
- 3:06pm
- Bugscope Team click to drive requires you to click in one direction to move in that direction and click again to stop
- Bugscope Team click to center you can click on an area of the screen and you will have that area centered, which is a little more controlled than click to drive can be
- Bugscope Team so when we make presets we like to close in on a feature on an insect, and then if you wanted, you can lower the mag so everyone can see what we are actually looking at
- Bugscope Team you are doing a great job so far
- Teacher How do I lower the mag?
Bugscope Team in the upper right you should see the magnify box, you can just click on the - and +
- Bugscope Team so you can see we were looking at a small part of the compound eye of a fruit fly
- Teacher Very cool... Now during the session students can ask questions, but do you also ask them questions?
- Bugscope Team we dont usually ask the students questions, usually the students are too busy asking us questions and we are hurrying to answer them all
- 3:12pm
- Teacher Alright.. What are the thorny things in the picture?
Bugscope Team those are called setae (seta sing.), which are basically insect hairs
- Bugscope Team setae
- Teacher Neat...
- Bugscope Team the setae in the image are used by the fruit fly to assess windspeed
- Bugscope Team insects have hairs all over their body as a way for them to sense their surroundings
- Teacher Thank you so much for allowing me to get up to speed on your program. I will see you at 4:00 pm with our after school girls team.
- Bugscope Team they are mechanoreceptors and presumably bend a bit in the wind
- Bugscope Team scott is moving the scope
- Teacher Bye!
- 3:22pm
- 3:27pm
- 3:56pm
- Bugscope Team hello fred, the session should start soon
- Guest Thanks
- Guest ... just kibbutzing
- Bugscope Team sounds cool to me
- Bugscope Team hey there again miss gaye-lynn
- Bugscope Team just let us know when you have any questions, and we will do our best to answer them all
- Teacher The girls just arrived and they will be right up
- Bugscope Team Cool. Hi Sue!
- Bugscope Team I am just getting off of the TEM, not quite done...
- 4:02pm
- Bugscope Team This is a scary looking critter.
- Bugscope Team We are ready to roll.
- Guest Hi, Scott and Team. So glad to be an observer today. Thanks for the invite. I was born in Milwaukee, does that count as a connection to this class?
- Teacher We will be ready in one minute
- Bugscope Team Sure, Sue!
- Bugscope Team heh i guess that will be good enough for today -.^
- Bugscope Team Hi Jon!
- Bugscope Team hi
- Bugscope Team I am going to try to draft Erica into helping us this afternoon as well.
- Teacher Hi Scott our girls are ready to go now..
- Bugscope Team all right, well if you want, you can start by clicking on a preset
- 4:07pm
- Bugscope Team those are its grabber claws
- Bugscope Team this is a true bug
- Bugscope Team Hemiptera
- Bugscope Team this looks so much like a turkey
- Bugscope Team lei lei says it looks like a lobster
- Bugscope Team you can see that it haas piercing mouthparts
- Bugscope Team it is probably pretty fierce in its world
- Bugscope Team it's a turkey-lobster!
- Teacher tell me about the claws
- Bugscope Team Miss Gaye-Lynn are we going to have students logging on today to ask questions?
- Bugscope Team There now we can see the claws you were asking about.
- Teacher The girls are the ones asking and driving right now...
- Bugscope Team You can see that they are designed to pierce and to hold tight once they grab something.
- Bugscope Team This is a great image.
- Teacher why is its mouth in that way
- Bugscope Team this is one of the claws...
- Teacher are we looking at the mouth now
- Bugscope Team some true bugs use their mouth parts to suck blood as well
- Bugscope Team maybe you can take the mag up to see the end of the proboscis.
- 4:12pm
- Bugscope Team in the middle area, it comes down from the head to the bottom of the screen
- Bugscope Team it's right in the middle of the body and at the bottom of the screen now
- Bugscope Team D'Oh..
- Teacher what are we looking at
- Bugscope Team the little spikey balls (and you can increase the mag if you want) are pollen, they are on the true bug
- Bugscope Team they have spikes so they stick better
- Bugscope Team if you decrease the mag, just lower the contrast in the adjust box
- Bugscope Team so this is still the lacebug. its cuticle looks like that of an ant to me
- Bugscope Team click to center would be good to use if you want to center the pollen
- Bugscope Team this guy must have been lounging around in a flower
- Bugscope Team please feel free to drive around and see where you are
- Bugscope Team when you have hay fever it is because of those little spikey pollens
- Bugscope Team let us know if you have any trouble
- Bugscope Team yeah Jon is right -- ragweed pollen looks very much like what we see now
- Teacher where is the bug is from
- 4:17pm
- Bugscope Team Cate found all of these today in our collection.
- Bugscope Team so they are all from Illinois, I think.
- Bugscope Team I'm not sure where abouts in the world it is specifically found, sorry
- Teacher are there real spikes
- Bugscope Team on the pollen?
- Bugscope Team BTW, when it is bright like that, just click on click to adjust and lower the contrast
- Teacher yes
- Bugscope Team yeah the spikes are so they will stick to insects and animald
- Bugscope Team ant head
- Bugscope Team this is nice
- Teacher please explain this image
- Bugscope Team so ants are usually blind or are close to it
- Bugscope Team they will have small compound eyes then fruit flies, because they dont rely on them so much
- Bugscope Team the compound eye is the round circle by the antenna
- Teacher how do they find their way around?
- Bugscope Team some ants dont have any eyes at all
- 4:23pm
- Bugscope Team now you can see the compound eye to the right
- Bugscope Team ants usually utilize their antennae quite a bit more than their eyes
- Teacher how does the eye let them see?
Bugscope Team each facet will turn on and off as an object passes by
- Bugscope Team and you could guess from the position and the prominence of the antennae compared to the eye
- Bugscope Team these are facets, called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team when we find them broken, sometimes, we see that they are actually crystals, like lenses.
- Teacher what are the little bumps on the eye?
Bugscope Team those are called ommatidia (ommatidium for singular) they are the individual parts of the compound eye
- Bugscope Team some ants have much more primitive eyes, as Cate had alluded to.
- Bugscope Team this one is fairly complex
- Bugscope Team each of the parts will relay back to the brain what the insect is seeing,
- Bugscope Team I don't know what an ant's brain looks like, but if you were to see a fruit fly brain you would see that much of it is devoted to visual processing
- Teacher what are the little hairs for
Bugscope Team since insects have that hard shell, the exoskeleton, they need to have a way to sense their surroundings, so they have setae (which are insect hairs) that are connected to nerves that will tell the insect what is going on
- 4:28pm
- Bugscope Team the hairs, which we are supposed to call 'setae,' are probably sensory here
- Bugscope Team they are used sort of like cat or rat whiskers in the dark
- Bugscope Team this is a water beetle claw
- Bugscope Team I just read online that an ant's brain has 250,00 brain cells--it says that a human has 10,000 million brain cells
- Bugscope Team the way to think about it is that insects don't have skin like we do -- they have an exoskeleton.
- Bugscope Team like a suit of armor
- Teacher what are the lines for
- Bugscope Team the exoskeleton is made of chitin, and we also call it cuticle -- it is much like fingernail material
- Bugscope Team the lines are little plates in the cuticle
- Bugscope Team so if you wore a suit of armor all of the time, you would be like an insect everyday, and to be able to feel even the breeze it would be helpful to have things sticking through the armor that would allow you to sense the outer world
- Teacher What are thies
Bugscope Team i think these are setae for swimming, but that is just a guess, maybe scott knows better then me, scott?
- 4:33pm
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down a little you can see where are on the water beetle's body
- Bugscope Team i think its on one of its limbs
- Bugscope Team I think Cate is correct -- they are used to swim
- Bugscope Team so they are like flippers, in a way
- Teacher what are the little circles
- Bugscope Team this is the carbon tape surface
- Bugscope Team to make samples, i put a piece of double stick carbon tape on a circular aluminum stub
- Bugscope Team we use the tape to stick the bugs down
- Teacher tell us more about this
- Bugscope Team we also use silver paint to help ground the bugs, because we are shooting electrons at them.
- Bugscope Team the bumps are uneven areas that help increase surface area for extra stickyness
- Bugscope Team and in order to make the insects conductive (so they dont charge up) we coat them in a thin layer of gold-palladium
- Bugscope Team these are lots and lots of bacteria
- Bugscope Team so around each 'bug' you will see a pool of silver paint that Cate used to get the sample to stick even better.
- Bugscope Team this is such high mag that the image is distorted
- Teacher what type of bacteria are these
- Bugscope Team the energy of the electron beam is so strong that it can distort the sample, as we saw.
- 4:38pm
- Bugscope Team well they are bacilli -- the rod-shaped bacteria
- Teacher is this bacteria good or bad
- Bugscope Team so they could be one of hundreds of species
- Bugscope Team they are good; they help things decay
- Teacher does this type of bacteria turn into a virus
Bugscope Team no but some times bacteria get infected with virus and burst open
- Bugscope Team ecoli looks like this, but i doubt it is ecoli
- Bugscope Team e.coli
- Bugscope Team anthrax looks like these, as (as Cate says) does E.coli
- Bugscope Team Escherichia coli
- Bugscope Team we had someone using the tranmission electron microscope here to image anthrax spores
- Bugscope Team They are called Bacillus anthracis.
- Teacher explain the image thet we are looking at now
- Bugscope Team can you lower the mag a bit
- Bugscope Team so we can see where it starts
- Bugscope Team other way please
- Bugscope Team Cate says this is one of the palps -- one of the mouthparts that an insect uses to taste and sometimes manipulate its food.
- Bugscope Team oh its an antenna
- Bugscope Team Oops it is an antenna.
- Bugscope Team sometimes it is hard to tell.
- Bugscope Team the palps are a little further in
- Teacher are they eyes
Bugscope Team yes the eyes face down toward the water
- Bugscope Team beetles have those bulbous-tipped antennae
- 4:43pm
- Bugscope Team the eyes are to the left and right, above the little setae next to the antennae
- Teacher where are the eyes
- Bugscope Team the eyes are a little hard to see but they are at the lower parts of the head
- Bugscope Team they have compound eyes
- Bugscope Team to the right and left of the antena
- Bugscope Team though from here, the eyes look like another part of the head
- Bugscope Team this is a whirligig beetle
- Bugscope Team this is the mouth
- Bugscope Team you can see the rounded thing to the right -- that is one of the palps, one of the mouthparts
- Bugscope Team there are mandibular and maxillary palps
- Bugscope Team these have little openings in the ends that hold setae that function like tastebuds.
- Bugscope Team nice
- Bugscope Team this is a dirty pollen grain on a spider
- Bugscope Team the really small balls on it are called brochosomes
- Bugscope Team the spider may have been eating leafhoppers
- Teacher is the same type of pollen we saw before
- Bugscope Team it is so similar we cannot be sure
- Bugscope Team now you can see the spinnerets
- Bugscope Team all spiders produce silk, but not all of them make webs
- 4:48pm
- Bugscope Team my fault, it slipped
- Teacher why doesn't all of themm make webs
- Bugscope Team but you can se the fangs really well
- Teacher what are their enemies
Bugscope Team they have lots of enemies: other spiders wasps birds & nemotodes to name few
- Bugscope Team the fangs are under those two chelicerae in the middle
- Bugscope Team they eat bugs, and they suck all of the fluids out of them like a milkshake
- Bugscope Team preying mantids like to eat them
- Teacher why does it have a lot of hairs
- Bugscope Team the web is used to bind, sometimes, and sometimes to shoot out and stun something
- Bugscope Team the greatest threat to spiders are other spiders. When times are hard and food is scarce, it becomes hard for the spider to overlook it's next of kin.
- Bugscope Team actually they do often have a lot of hairs that are specially suited to sense vibration
- Bugscope Team daddy long legs are great spider killers, so be nice to them!
- Bugscope Team some spiders, like tarantulas, have hairs that they release when you disturb them
- Teacher what is this
- Bugscope Team they are called urticating hairs, and they make you itch and wish you had not picked on the spider
- Bugscope Team this is the eye, the compound eye, of a fruit fly
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down you can see where you are
- Teacher why is thee mold on it's eye
Bugscope Team one reason might be that it was near some rotten fruit before cate got him
- Bugscope Team the antennae are on the right of the head here
- Bugscope Team now you can see the antennae -- the mouth would be to the right
- 4:53pm
- Bugscope Team they are old flies
- Bugscope Team oops Cate beat me to it
- Bugscope Team we need more insects for our collection, but its winter, so they are hard to find
- Bugscope Team actually jon has a point
- Bugscope Team Daniel, who used to work on bugscope all of the time, grew fruit flies in his kitchen. But then he got married...
- Bugscope Team This looks like a tiny rock.
- Teacher what are these hairs for
- Bugscope Team you can see that there is some oily substance on the fruit fly's thorax.
- Teacher why does it have oil
- Bugscope Team the hairs are mostly sensory, probably. But some of the microsetae -- the tiny hairs, also seem to add surface area and thus lift to the insect as it flies
- Teacher name one of the most interesting adaptations of a fruit fly
- Bugscope Team the oily stuff is probably hemolymph that came out of the body after it died
- Bugscope Team the mouth is designed to help it suck up liquids, and it is really cool-looking before it dries out
- 4:58pm
- Bugscope Team you can see the eyes are HUGE, they encompass most of the head
- Bugscope Team that gives them an almost 360 degree view
- Bugscope Team these are the guys that have such huge visual centers in the brain
- Bugscope Team the mouth, I am sorry, does not look so good here
- Bugscope Team to the back of the body we should be able to see one of the halteres
- Bugscope Team to the left
- Bugscope Team this is a owl fly larva
- Bugscope Team now this is wild -- we just got these
- Bugscope Team or part of it anyway
- Bugscope Team Cate thinks these are spiracles
- Bugscope Team i think these little mouth guys are spiracles, which are breathing holes
- Bugscope Team which let the insect respire (breathe)
- Teacher why are they shaped that way
- Bugscope Team they are protected from sucking up materials they do not want to do into the body cavity
- Bugscope Team so they have these sort of filters on them
- Bugscope Team it looks real cool at low mag
- Bugscope Team they can open and close in some bugs, like cockroaches, that allows them to live in places with little oxygen
- Bugscope Team larval insects can be bizarre -- they don't even have to have six legs
- Teacher what is that
- Bugscope Team although this does have six legs
- Bugscope Team if you keep lowering the mag you will see
- Bugscope Team the owl fly larvea
- Bugscope Team you can see when we get close that there is a lot of fungus on the body
- Bugscope Team if you drive to the north now you can see its head.
- Bugscope Team this is so cool.
- Bugscope Team the undersides look fine tho scott
- Teacher what is the purpose of the fungi
- 5:04pm
- Teacher is this a boy or a girl
- Bugscope Team the fungi came along after the larva died
- Bugscope Team and help to rot it
- Bugscope Team that is a good question
- Bugscope Team the eyes are covered up by its jaws
- Bugscope Team you cannot always tell a boy from a girl with insect
- Bugscope Team s
- Teacher what does it eat
- Bugscope Team the body parts that let you distinguish between the sexes may be on the inside with a lot of insects
- Teacher thank you very much
- Bugscope Team I think they trap smaller insects
- Teacher we have to go now but thank you very much
- Bugscope Team it has a hair-trigger jaw that snaps shut like that of a trapjaw ant
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team See you tomorrow?
- Bugscope Team ok thanks for doing the session with us today
- Guest Nice Session! Thanks
Bugscope Team hi
- Teacher good bye
- Bugscope Team PKSmart let us know if you would like to drive for a few minutes.
- Bugscope Team did you want to drive around
- Bugscope Team You now have control...
- Bugscope Team you can drive the scope now if you want
- Bugscope Team or click on presets to the lower right
- 5:09pm
- Guest this is really interesting!
- Bugscope Team you can magnify to see more detail
- Guest it looks almost like scales on a snake
- Bugscope Team yep
- Bugscope Team the eye here is a compound eye
- Bugscope Team which has little components called ommatidia
- Guest so they dont see things like us, right?
Bugscope Team well we get one picture
- Bugscope Team each ommatidia which get an image and send the pieces of the image to the brain
- Guest like a puzzle?
Bugscope Team yeah like a jigsaw puzzle
- Bugscope Team they don't use their eyes as much as their antennae -- so they have senses that we don't have
- Bugscope Team kinda
- Guest the detail is amazing!
Bugscope Team we are at 1696x mag right now
- Bugscope Team if we were trying to get super good resolution we would be closer to the sample
- Bugscope Team insects dont have much interesting details at above 50,000x-ish, but we can take the scope way higher than that
- 5:14pm
- Bugscope Team for bugscope we are far from the sample so the kids can get good low mag images as well as high mag
- Bugscope Team oh yeah and btw you are controlling a 600,000 dollar microscope!
- Guest I better be careful
Bugscope Team dont worry, the software for bugscope wont let you break anything
- Guest I didn't know ants had hairs
Bugscope Team actually all insects have hairs, but in the insect world they are called setae
- Bugscope Team the antenna has a ball and socket type of joint
- Bugscope Team see insects have their exoskeleton which is like a suit of armor, and if you have a suit of armor on, you wont be able to feel anything through it
- Bugscope Team so they have setae that go through the armor and are connected to nerves
- Bugscope Team so they have setae that will allow them to feel, smell, taste, sense vibration (like on a spider), or detect wind movement (like on a fruit fly eye)
- Guest Gregg says, "Nice Ant"
- Guest what kind of ant is it?
- Bugscope Team i am not that knowledgable about ants, it was just a little black ant we had in our collection
- 5:19pm
- Bugscope Team anyways, we have to start closing down the session, ok?
- Bugscope Team do you have anymore questions?
- Guest Thanks for letting me drive - it was fun. I just stopped by to say Hi
- Bugscope Team ok well see ya around! bugscope is fun
- Guest bye
- Bugscope Team bye
