Connected on 2007-10-16 08:45:00 from Moyock, NC, US
- 8:28am
- Bugscope Team Aww this is charging.
- Bugscope Team proboscis
- Bugscope Team Hello!
- Bugscope Team Hi!
- Bugscope Team hi joyce!
- 8:33am
- Bugscope Team hi joyce
- Teacher Hello to you Chas, Alex, and Scott from Mrs. Metger's second grade class!
- Bugscope Team hi class!!!!
- Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope
- Bugscope Team it is a pleasure having you!
- Teacher We have lots and lots of questions to ask. Here we go!
- Bugscope Team Hi guys, we're ready for you to start controlling the microscope and ask questions, so go right ahead!
- Teacher Mackenzie asks how small is an aphid?
Bugscope Team Aphids can be even smaller than ants. Sometimes ants essentially "farm" aphids. The ants provide protection and carry the aphids around to food sources and in tern the aphids produce a sugary substance for the ants to eat
- Bugscope Team Aphids you can still see... I will look it up but I think it is about a millimeter.
- 8:39am
- Bugscope Team joyce, try lowering the magnification, that way you'll get a better look at the whole insect.
- Bugscope Team Aphids can be 1 to 10 mm long. That is a surprise -- I didn't realize they could be that long.
- Teacher Madison asks What are the part on the Monarch leg?
- Bugscope Team this is near the tip of the leg.
- Teacher Wow! It's spiky!
Bugscope Team Yes! One very general theme about viewing insects in the electron microscope is that they look a lot "hairer" and spikier than by the naked eye
- Bugscope Team Monarchs have chemosensory setae on their legs, meaning that they have tiny hairs that they can smell with, and right on the tips of their legs
- Bugscope Team they have mechanosensors in their feet that allows them to taste and smell
- Bugscope Team chemosensory means they can sense chemicals in the air, which is the same as smelling
- Bugscope Team you sent us a lot of cool stuff by the way
- Bugscope Team joyce, when mavigating the scope, try click to center, rather than click to drive. it's a little easier to get the hang of.
- Bugscope Team Yeah, I'm really impressed by these presets. Cool samples guys!
- Bugscope Team and if you get lost, just click on another preset, that will take you to an interesting location
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team if you click to drive you have to click again to stop, and sometimes you don't realize you've stopped and start going again
- Bugscope Team Hey hey]
- Bugscope Team Right in time, Annie, for a non insect.
- Bugscope Team this is a milkweed seedling
- 8:44am
- Bugscope Team Annie is our entomologist
- Bugscope Team hi all...good. I am making my breakfast anyway ;)
- Bugscope Team a little fiber for you, then
- Teacher Kyle asks if any other insects eat milkweed besides the Monarch.
Bugscope Team Yes, although most of the bugs that do are specially adapted to it because the milky juice is somewhat toxic
Bugscope Team There is a species of longhorned beetle, the milkweed beetle incidentally, that feeds on milkweed
- Bugscope Team good question
- Bugscope Team milkweed bugs do, they are the guys that are black and have little orange streaks on them
- Bugscope Team There are insects called Milkweed bugs that look sort of like fireflies.
- Bugscope Team Cate beat me to it!
- Teacher It looks like a starfish. It looks like there are holes in it!
Bugscope Team The wing scales are optimized to be strong but lightweight. You can see several levels of ribbing as a support structure with a thin skin over it, much like early airplanes
- Teacher Ms. Kopp says it looks like her pantyhose!
- Bugscope Team yes those are tiny holes -- you can tell that it is hollow
- Bugscope Team now we are looking at wing scales
- Bugscope Team to an insect the scales are sort of like what feathers are to a bird
- Bugscope Team I once saw a big fat caterpillar crawling on a milkweed
- Bugscope Team but some insects have scales and do not fly
- Teacher Matthew asks, "What holds the wing scales together?"
Bugscope Team Well the entire insect is made of chitin and proteins...so the scales are held together by some combination of chitin and protein
- 8:49am
- Bugscope Team annie likes her beetles
- Bugscope Team ;)
- Bugscope Team so a scale is strong individually but not connected well to the insect
- Teacher Brendan says it looks like a rattlesnake's scales!
Bugscope Team thats just what I think it looks like too
- Bugscope Team this is the proboscis of the Monarch, and it is normally coiled up when it is not being used
- Bugscope Team the proboscis is the straw-like mouthpart, sort of like an elephant's trunk
- Teacher So when the scales on a wing work together, they are strong, But when they are alone, they are weak.
Bugscope Team Yes. Together they can propel the insect through the air, but individually they're easily enough detached that if the butterfly gets caught in a spiders web it can just shed the scales that are adhered to the silk and get away
- Bugscope Team The physiological mechanism that butterflies use to extend their proboscis is very similar to how those paper party horns work
- Bugscope Team if the scales come off easily it ,means that if the butterfly is caught it can slip away by losing scales
- Bugscope Team They pump fluid into the proboscis to extend
- Teacher Madison asks, "What is a compound eye?"
- Bugscope Team I don't think that's how elephants do it ; )
- Bugscope Team I don't know anything about elephants...I am an entomologist ;)
- Bugscope Team do you think we could put an elephant trunk in the scope?
- Bugscope Team a compound eye has many tiny facets called ommatidia that function like lenses and produce individual images.
- 8:54am
- Bugscope Team We wouldn't need a microscope to see it.
- Teacher When the scales come off easily, is it like when we saw a blue-tailed skink lose part of its tail when a predator got it?
Bugscope Team Yes, very similar. Insects often will sacrifice non-essential body parts to escap predators
- Bugscope Team some moths and butterflies taste bad enough that the spider will just cut the web and let them loose anyway
- Bugscope Team autotomy
- Bugscope Team a spider can autotomize a leg, meaning that it lets it fall off, if it gets poison in it from a bite and the poison might move toward the body
- Bugscope Team so it jettisons its leg
- Teacher We didn't know that about spiders.
- Teacher Krystal asks, "Does every insect have antennaes?"
Bugscope Team Yes, all insects have one pair of antennae
- Bugscope Team I guess because they are used to working with toxins they also have a defense against toxins
- Bugscope Team ooh that is a good question for Annie
- Bugscope Team about the antennae
- Bugscope Team these look like lips
- Bugscope Team yay!
- 8:59am
- Bugscope Team That is one of the features that separates insects from other arthropods
- Bugscope Team and from non-insect hexapods
- Bugscope Team we were thinking that as well about the spiracle
- Bugscope Team poop
- Bugscope Team a big string of mold spores
- Bugscope Team we found a bunch of this in the poo
- Bugscope Team what did the poop come from?
- Bugscope Team lovely
- Teacher Hi guys. We have lost our large image of the preset, so we are using the small image.
- Bugscope Team try refreshing the screen (F5)
- Bugscope Team there might be lag too, just try waiting a bit, ah looks like you caught up now?
- Bugscope Team :)
- Bugscope Team can you see the spores on the big screen now?
- Bugscope Team I was thinking that the mold spores came along after the poop was 'born,' but I wonder if the animal ate the mold spores
- 9:04am
- Teacher Kyle has a unique question, "Are there any other insects that can survive a nuclear explosion besides the cockroach!"
Bugscope Team I don't know definitively, but my guess is yes, lots. Particularly the smaller ones, and especially ones that live underground. To get an idea about what might survive, we can look back to what insects survived the same catastrophes that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct
- Bugscope Team I know I like to have a big bowl of mold and milk in the mornings
- Bugscope Team I am not sure if I should respond to that Cate
Bugscope Team in a way you did :p
- Bugscope Team Cockroaches are very good at surviving in a great variety of conditions, but I am sure there are other insects that will live as well
- Teacher Shannon says that the chrysalis reminds her of the look of the caterpillar that made it.
- Bugscope Team I mean, Cate, what happens after that?
- Bugscope Team this is one of the coolest images of the day
- Bugscope Team very beautiful
- Teacher Lauren wants to know more about Bugscope.
Bugscope Team What part? That's pretty open-ended. The microscope, the people, ?
- Bugscope Team Yeah, this is really pretty. Scott I hope you get an XHD image of this after the session
- Bugscope Team it is really interesting to see what Shannon says -- the tiny feature reflects the whole pattern
- Bugscope Team we have been doing it for 8+ years
- Bugscope Team since Chas was 15 and a sophomore in high school
- Bugscope Team he is now a graduate student
- 9:10am
- Teacher How about the electron part of the microscope as a starter to explain Bugscope.
Bugscope Team The kind of microscopes you might have in your school are light microscopes. They use glass lenses to bend light and magnify your view of the sample. The electron microscope shoots a beam of electrons, essentially a flow of electricity, at the sample and observes the interaction with the sample.
- Bugscope Team the microscope has a vacuum chamber that we put the samples in
- Bugscope Team when they are in the chamber and it is pumped down -- the air is taken out -- we can beam electrons at the samples
- Teacher Brendan will try to move the microscope.
- Bugscope Team go for it brendan!
- Bugscope Team the electron beam hits the sample like a spotlight, and where it hits the sample, secondary electrons come out of the sample and can be collected by a detector
- Teacher This looks like a brain. What part is this?
- Bugscope Team the detector gives us the images we see
- Bugscope Team I think this is part of the chrysalis
- Bugscope Team if you take the magnification down, to a larger view, we can see where we are
- Bugscope Team The microscope itself is about the size of a refridgerator. The rest of its support equipment fills a small room. It needs it's own dedicated electrical, water, and compressed air
- Teacher Krystal will be navigating next.How appropriate that she would choose chrystals!
- Bugscope Team this is cool. it would be good to look around here
- 9:15am
- Teacher It looks like coral.
- Bugscope Team it does look like coral, and it grows the same way
- Teacher What part of the larva is this?
- Bugscope Team If you decrease the magnification a bit we can get a better look at it
- Bugscope Team good driving!
- Bugscope Team It is the mouth!
- Bugscope Team I think
- Bugscope Team this is the underside, just below the head -- or that
- Bugscope Team is where we were
- Bugscope Team Here you can see the deflated prolegs
- Bugscope Team or like Annie said -- the mouth
- Bugscope Team professional legs
- Bugscope Team krystal you are doing a great job of driving the scope!
- Bugscope Team you can see three sets of "real" legs
- Bugscope Team I guess they are protolegs
- Bugscope Team really they have real and prolegs at the same time?
- Teacher Collin is now "driving" the microscope!
- Bugscope Team I want to go back and see that
- Bugscope Team Awesome go for it Collin.
- Bugscope Team good job collin!
- Bugscope Team now we can see the edge of the wing
- Bugscope Team to the right
- 9:20am
- Teacher How much longer do we have?
- Bugscope Team Ah we are back to the leg story, the leg show
- Bugscope Team at least a half hour, and more if you would like
- Bugscope Team the little half moon things on the tips of the prolegs are called crotchets
- Teacher This is Shannon as our microscope driver.
- Bugscope Team this is a place where it was hard to get a good image
- Bugscope Team the sample was charging up with electrons when Cate made the presets this morning
- Bugscope Team I lost my Attachment Devices of Insect Cuticle book -- I lent it to someone and it is gone
- Bugscope Team I need a new insect anatomy book
- Bugscope Team you are really sad about that book scott.
Bugscope Team I agree :)
- Teacher Shannon wants to know if the gap is where the eyes were.
Bugscope Team This is the side of the caterpillar
- Bugscope Team yeah...
- Bugscope Team you should get a copy of Snodgrass 1923
- Bugscope Team I think the cuticle cracked open there and then dried and closed again
- Bugscope Team sometimes we do not get to see the eyes because we mount the insects on their backs
- Teacher Shannon wants to know why and how the crack happened.
Bugscope Team Because caterpillar cuticle has so much water in it, when the caterpillar dies, it dries up, making the once squishy cuticle hard and brittle...and hard and brittle things break easily
- Bugscope Team Caterpillar cuticle is soft and squishy because it contains a lot of water. Caterpillars are eating machines and they need stretchy cuticle that they can grow into
- Bugscope Team if the eyes are only on top we won't get to see them
- 9:25am
- Teacher Here comes another question. Richard asks, "Do some insects have more than two eyes?"
Bugscope Team Many insects have a set of three "simple" eyes on the tops of their heads. They use these eyes to determine the position of the sun and to determine if it is night or day
- Bugscope Team my old boss was like that -- an eating machine
- Bugscope Team he had to buy bigger and bigger cars
- Bugscope Team I imagine he is driving a bus by now
- Bugscope Team yes as Annie says a lot of insects, especially flying insects, may have five eyes
- Bugscope Team the three simple eyes on top of the head are called ocelli
- Bugscope Team and the non-simple eyes are the compound eyes
- Teacher Cool about the sun. One of our reading groups learned that Monarch butterflies follow the sun like a compass!
Bugscope Team We are only just beginning to understand how insects use the sun and how photoperiod affects insect life cycles and life histories
- Bugscope Team I think that is smarter than trying to follow magnetic fields, I guess unless it is dark out
- Bugscope Team back to the poop
- Teacher Here comes Tommy, the microscope driver1
- Bugscope Team oh yeah
- 9:31am
- Teacher Kyle asks, 'How many eggs can a queen ant have in a day?"
Bugscope Team Well over a thousand
- Bugscope Team Annie?
- Bugscope Team you guys are doing a great job controlling the 'scope!
- Bugscope Team another one of those cool little spiracles
- Bugscope Team yes I agree with Cate you all are doing such a good job!
- Bugscope Team in some species of course, Ants are a very specious and diverse family of insects.
- Bugscope Team speciose
- Bugscope Team hahaha
- Teacher Kyle is still thinking about poop when he asks, "Do bugs go to the bathroom?" and Shannnon wants to know where they go to the bathroom.
Bugscope Team Yes, if you have every kepy a pet caterpillar...which I am guessing you guys have, you will see lots of poop.
- Bugscope Team pretty much wherever they want
- Bugscope Team they do not have the same sense of decorum that we do, generally
- Bugscope Team We call bug poop frass
- Bugscope Team that's right -- an entomology term
- Teacher Here comes a female microscope driver named Mackenzie.
- Bugscope Team Or frass, if you will
- 9:36am
- Teacher Hello in Illinois, this is Poo...no relation to frass!...I sent two different kinds of chrysalises. Did you get any good images from the Monarch ones in the film container?
- Bugscope Team Cate prepared the samples and had limited space on the stub. We will have to ask her.
- Bugscope Team this is the monarch chrysalis here I think, which the spiracle that looks like a mouth
- Bugscope Team The stub is only 1.75 inches in diameter.
- Bugscope Team we we were near the spiracle a little bit ago anyway
- Bugscope Team the sample is charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Team the thing with the spiracle is it likes to charge up is seems
- Bugscope Team here is the point on the chrysalis
- Bugscope Team hey it's the tip!
- Teacher Kyle called it a button.
- Bugscope Team neat
- Bugscope Team This is the place where the chrysalis attaches to the leaf or stem of the plant
- Bugscope Team or it was
- Bugscope Team the chrysalis, like the other things in the 'scope,has gold-palladium on it to help make it conductive
- Teacher Shane asks, "How do deer ticks make you sick?"
Bugscope Team Some deer ticks carry a bacteria in their saliva that gets into human blood when they bite them, and the bacteria multiplies in human blood and makes you sick
- 9:41am
- Teacher Here comes John, our newest microscope driver.
- Bugscope Team but for some reason it is not grounded very well, and that is why we were getting those bright, poor images
- Bugscope Team ticks can transmit human diseases such as Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, equine encephalitis, Colorado tick fever, and several forms of ehrlichiosis
- Bugscope Team deer ticks may also carry nerve toxins (neurotoxins) in their saliva that can make you sick
- Teacher Shane says, "So their spit goes into your blood and makes you sick?'
Bugscope Team It is the bacteria in the spit that makes you sick, not the spit itself
- Bugscope Team yes that is what happens; sometimes they can cause what is called tick paralyisis
Bugscope Team But, I think that is pretty rare though...
- Bugscope Team wikipedia says only the mosquito is a greater transmitter of human desease
Bugscope Team That is true. Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on the planet!!!
- 9:47am
- Teacher Christin wonders about the real size of this larva.
Bugscope Team Monarch caterpillars are about 2-3 inches long when they are full-grown
- Teacher Here is Madison on the approach as our next driver.
- Bugscope Team More humans die and become sick from mosquito vectored diseases than from lion bites, shark attacks, buffalo stampedes and probably all other mammal-related causes combined
- Bugscope Team the micron bar in the lower left corner of the screen lets you get an idea of the size of the sample
- Teacher Shane asks, "What is that?"
- Bugscope Team so when we were looking at the larva, the micron bar was actually a millimeter
- Bugscope Team and the larva was several mm long
- Bugscope Team the part of the larva we were looking at was dried and shriveled, and like Annie says the caterpillars can be 2 or 3 inches long
- Bugscope Team there are 25.4 mm in an inch, so what we saw was much smaller than the real size of the juicy caterpillar
- Teacher Are these the eyes?
- 9:52am
- Bugscope Team I didn't see them. We may have to have Annie drive us to where they are.
- Bugscope Team No we are looking at part of the caterpillars mouth, I think
- Teacher Another Madison asks, "Do some insects have more than two eyes?"
Bugscope Team Yes, some insects have three "simple" eyes on the tops of their heads.
- Bugscope Team the simple eyes were on the caterpillar that was laying on its side
- Bugscope Team some insects have 3 simple eyes and two compound, or complex, eyes
- Bugscope Team in insects like fruit flies a very large portion of the brain is devoted to sight
- Bugscope Team by simple eyes, you mean ones that are not compound eyes, right?
- Bugscope Team yeah the ocelli, which resemble spider eyes
- Teacher Hello friends in Illinois...we will have one more driver and then we will have to stop for today.
- Teacher Our final navigator is Shane.
- Bugscope Team right...I should be more precise
- Bugscope Team All of you have done such a good job today.
- Bugscope Team no, you were good, i was just wondering!
- Bugscope Team Annie we would be in trouble without you. I would be telling the kids that lobsters are among the largest insects.
- Teacher Shane was asking if the image on the lower right is the stomach.
- Bugscope Team and i would be calling all these animals bugs...
- Bugscope Team And that there is a conspiracy among entomologists and seafood providers not to let us know.
- 9:57am
- Teacher John asks, "Why do butterflies have that name?"
Bugscope Team I think it goes back to pre-Shakespearian England...it is a corruption of "flutter-by", I believe
- Bugscope Team hahaha! I kind of think lobsters are very similar to insects
- Bugscope Team looks like the former contents of the stomach to me
- Teacher To finish our lesson for today, here are a few final questions from my students:
- Bugscope Team oh that makes sense annie
- Teacher Collin asks, "How many legs does a mosquito have?"
- Teacher Chelsey asks, " How can a water beetle stay under water?"
Bugscope Team Water beetles have a couple of strategies to stay under water. Some carry a little bubble of air with them that they use as a kind of scuba tank. Others have hairs that grab tiny bubble of air that covers their entire body. They do have to come up eventually to get more air
- Teacher Matthew asks, "How can a dragonfly go so fast?"
Bugscope Team Dragonflies are very acrobatic fliers in part because they have very good vision and they can navigate well
- Bugscope Team mosquitoes are insects, and they are adult insects, so they have six legs
- Bugscope Team the dragonfly has four wings and is very light and streamlined
- Bugscope Team I imagine that is why it can go so fast
- Bugscope Team dragonflies have been around for a very long time -- they were hanging around when the dinosaurs were here
- Teacher Here is what we have learned about how butterflies survive because of the way their bodies are made.
- Teacher Kyle thinks that the proboscis helps them drink.
Bugscope Team That is true, they have a long straw-like proboscis that allows them to drink nectar from flowers as adults
- 10:03am
- Bugscope Team annie, do dragonflys have compound eyes or ocili like spiders do?
Bugscope Team They have large compound eyes, and a set of small ocelli (I believe)
- Teacher Mackenzie learned that the chrysalis has a thing that looks like lips on it. (Could you all explain what what part is for, please.)
Bugscope Team When an insect is in its chrysalis it is alive...and it has to breathe. The lip-looking part was a spiracle...kind of like an air hole
- Bugscope Team Annie is right -- dragonflies have huge eyes, and they are predators. They have to be very maneuverable.
- Bugscope Team the things that look like lips are spiracles
- Teacher Kyle knows that the hairs on butterfly legs help them keep grip.
Bugscope Team Hairs on the legs of the butterfly also help it to feel and to even taste!
- Bugscope Team on an adult insect there are two spiracles on each body segment
- Bugscope Team some of the hairs help them grip, and scratch, and some help them taste their food
- Teacher We learned that caterpillars are made up of mostly water.
- Teacher Matthew says thank you for your kindness and telling us stuff.
- Bugscope Team I think people are made up of mostly water as well.
Bugscope Team I was going to say that
- Bugscope Team Thank You Matthew!
- Teacher Kyle says he hopes you have lots of good results to all of our questions in Illinois.
- Teacher Collin thanks you for telling us the answers to our questions.
- Bugscope Team Thank you all for a very nice session. Great questions!
- Bugscope Team thank you students, you were all very good at controlling the microscope. you can brag to your friends that you got to control a $750,000 electron microscope today!
- Teacher Shane thanks you for telling us all about the stuff so that we can be smarter adults.
- Bugscope Team we appreciate getting to work with you and would like to do it again, like next year?
- Teacher Krystal thanks you for teaching us more about bugs.
- Teacher Madison thanks you for showing us all the stuff and being nice.
- Bugscope Team I am sure you will all turn out to be very smart adults!
- Teacher Another Madison thanks you for sharing all of the stuff.
- Teacher John thanks you for your cooperation.
- 10:08am
- Teacher Katelynn likes butterflies!
- Bugscope Team thank you for sending us the cool stuff to look at
- Bugscope Team we liked the milkweed seedling
- Bugscope Team we have never seen one before
- Teacher Kyle thanks you for all of your hard work and for studying with us. He wants you to study with us again next year.
- Bugscope Team and the cool cool spiracle we will be able to make into an image of the week
- Bugscope Team yay Kyle we would like to see you again next year as well
- Bugscope Team we would be happy to do another bugscope session with you all. just fill out another application.
- Teacher Well, I am totally impressed with Bugscope and your efforts to help my students. This has been a totally incredible experience. I would like Bugscope to be a tradition in my Science teaching. Thank you everyone! P.S. Will these images be able to be used in my classroom after today?
- Bugscope Team joyce, great session today. yes, all the images and the chat transcript are available on your bugscope member page: http://bugscope.itg.uiuc.edu/members/2007-054
- Bugscope Team joyce, it was a pleasure having you today. please fill out another bugscope app. we will keep an eye out for it!
- Bugscope Team We hope to see you back!
- Bugscope Team joyce, i'll email you that link to your member page....
- 10:15am
- Teacher THANK YOU!!!! SEE YOU NEXT TIME!!! BYE!!!!!!!!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team over and out
- Bugscope Team ok, poo is gone. going to close the session, unless anyone needs to stay on?
- Bugscope Team see you all later gators!
