Connected on 2008-02-28 09:00:00 from Sparta, WI, US
- 8:41am
- Bugscope Team we'll have to ask Annie to check them out
- Bugscope Team I am having weird things happen with my controller and closed the setup page...
- Bugscope Team hello mrs. sagler! welcome to bugscope.
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team We have been driving around, checking out this shield bug.
- Teacher Good morning all - this is the class that high point is running for us
- 8:46am
- Bugscope Team Great!
- Bugscope Team excellent, we are ready for you anytime. you should see controls on the top right of your browser
- Bugscope Team and presets on your bottom right
- Teacher This is Doug Geiwitz and I am just getting things checked over before the class starts
- Bugscope Team oh yeah, hi doug, we met on a previous session i think.
- Bugscope Team Shield bugs are related to stink bugs and are sometimes the same thing. They produce a foul-smelling liquid and we were looking for the places that might come from.
- Bugscope Team that may be what presets 10 and 11 represent.
- Teacher i will start things off then pass them over to the kids
- Bugscope Team Great!
- Bugscope Team sounds good
- 8:52am
- Teacher my name is lili what bug is this
Bugscope Team this is a shield bug, similar to a stink bug
- Teacher my name is sara is this the head?
- Bugscope Team hi sara, yes this is the head
- Bugscope Team the eyes are on the side of the face, look like half circles
- Bugscope Team yep, this is the head of the shield bug, and you can see the compound eyes on it too, try zooming in to get a better look
- Bugscope Team yeah, there ya go
- Bugscope Team the antennae are just above the eye
- Bugscope Team compound eyes are very cool. they are made up of hundreds of individual facets (ommatidia), each of which has a lens in it.
- Bugscope Team the eye is a compound eye, meaning it has many facets called ommatidia that capture an image
- Bugscope Team you are doing a great job so far, let us know if you are having any problems
- Bugscope Team the difference with the ommatidia is that the lens can't move, it's stuck in the direction it is looking, that is why the compound eye has so many ommatidia, that way it can see a wide angle.
- Bugscope Team the ommatidia are little lenses -- we can tell when we see a broken eye, occasionally. They are crystalline.
- Bugscope Team hi all
- 8:57am
- Bugscope Team Hi folks
- Teacher my name is delaney do thay have exoselten
Bugscope Team yep, insects have an exoskeleton which protects them from the harsh environment.
- Bugscope Team Annie we found these cool little organelles on the body of the shield bug -- see preset 11
- Bugscope Team yes the shield bug has an exoskeleton.
- Bugscope Team I see those--they could be scent glands
- Bugscope Team I am not sure
- Bugscope Team it is made of chitin and similar to what our fingernails are made of.
- Bugscope Team I am not sure what these are!
- Bugscope Team it is also called cuticle
- Teacher my name isevan howoldis it
Bugscope Team This insect is probably one year old. They live one summer, usually
- Bugscope Team this is probably less than a year old -- I don't think they last over the winter
- 9:03am
- Teacher my name is lili is the bug olive
- Bugscope Team Lili this one was kind of pale yellow.
- Bugscope Team a sturdy looking bug, and actually it is a bug -- a true bug
- Teacher she means alive
Bugscope Team no it is not alive
- Bugscope Team oops sorry none of the critters in the 'scope now are alive.
- Bugscope Team it wouldnt be able to live in the microscope if it were alive. plus it would be hard to look at if it moved around a lot
- Bugscope Team we don't kill them, usually; people give them to us after they have died
- Bugscope Team it would have to hold its breath for a long time because there is a vacuum in the specimen chamber
- Teacher hi my name is bryanna how many legs are on this bug
Bugscope Team All adult insects have 6 legs
- Bugscope Team we are beaming electrons at the samples, and the images we see come from electrons that bounce out of the conductive coat of gold-palladium we have put on the samples
- Bugscope Team so this shield bug is an adult, and it has six legs
- Bugscope Team you can see one of the antennae in the middle of the image, and you can see the bug's proboscis on the left, or you could a second ago...
- Bugscope Team the bug really is shaped like a shield
- Bugscope Team the proboscis is a mouth part that is like a straw
- Bugscope Team it is on its back so we can see its legs
- 9:08am
- Bugscope Team many of these bugs feed on plants and push their proboscis into the plant so they can suck juices out.
- Bugscope Team They eat an entirely liquid diet
- Teacher my name is coral dous it hurt the bugs eyes with drit on the eyes
Bugscope Team When insects are alive, they will clean dirt and goo from their eyes. I am not sure if it hurts them though. We don't know much about insect pain
- Bugscope Team be sure to try some of the other presets if you would like to see some other insects
- Bugscope Team spiders usually have 8 eyes
- Bugscope Team you can see they are all grouped together ehre
- Bugscope Team they can use their arms to wipe dirt away from their eyes. It probably does not hurt them; they can only feel if they have something there to transmit the feeling to nerves
- Bugscope Team these are spider eyes
- Bugscope Team ok, mrs. sagler 2, i just switched control to you
- Bugscope Team things should be okay now
- Student sorr, we had a little problem on our end and we are back now
- Bugscope Team no problemo
- Bugscope Team the spider here is on its belly
- Bugscope Team notice how hairy the insects are. those hairs are called "setae", a single hair is called a seta. setae help the insect to sense it's environment.
- 9:15am
- Student my name is will what kind of spider is it
Bugscope Team i dont know if we know what kind of spider this is
- Bugscope Team if you zoom in on on of the seta, you will see how it comes out of the exoskeleton.
- Bugscope Team its not very big. you can see the scale bar in the bottom right hand corner of the screen for 1mm
- Student my name is nick how long is this spider
- Bugscope Team it is about 5mm big according to the scalebar in the bottom right hand corner
- Bugscope Team hi nick, like cate said, check out the scale in the bottom left of the image, it says 1mm, that means one millimeter. so the spider is about 3-4 millimeters long i think
- Bugscope Team you are actually controlling the microscope live! the microscope is called an ESEM (environmental scanning electron microscope). it costs $600,000, but don't let that scare you.
- 9:20am
- Bugscope Team this is an ant mouth
- Bugscope Team we are looking at it from the underside
- Bugscope Team this is a flying ant
- Bugscope Team we have noticed that ants almost alway look like they have another insect in their mouths, but it is just that they have very busy mouths...
- Bugscope Team lots of little palps to help them taste what they might be eating
- Bugscope Team mrs sagler, all of the chat and images from this session are saved onto your member page, so you and your students can study the information later: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/memebers/2008-011
- Bugscope Team you can see that the antenna on this side, at least, is broken off
- Bugscope Team sorry the link is: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-011
- Student my name is evan how much dose it wae
Bugscope Team Much less than an ounce...maybe 0.1 oz? Just an estimate.
- Bugscope Team this probably weighs a hundred milligrams or so
- Bugscope Team very small and light
- Student my name is dustin is it a boy or a girl
Bugscope Team This is a female ant, most likely. Most of the ants that you see are girls
- 9:25am
- Bugscope Team I was thinking about a 10th of a gram
- Bugscope Team or less than a grain of rice
- Bugscope Team Gram...yes. I am all mixed up on units of weight
- Bugscope Team I think it is a boy
- Bugscope Team now you can see its wings
- Bugscope Team nice driving the scope, now you can see the wings of the ant!
- Bugscope Team ants and wasps are both related
- Bugscope Team oops I thought the opposite
- Bugscope Team I was wrong on how much the ants weighs...it all evens out in the end
- Bugscope Team that is nice of you to say Annie
- 9:30am
- Student hi my name is mara where do you find all these bugs
Bugscope Team Sometimes teachers and students send is samples. Sometimes we collect them ourselves
- Bugscope Team It's true
- Bugscope Team Mara we have been doing this for awhile, and people often send us bugs when they find them. We also collect them ourselves, sometimes. And Annie can get them from old collections for us.
- Bugscope Team Annie is an entomologist.
- Bugscope Team That I am
- Bugscope Team So she studies insects.
- Bugscope Team Annie rustles long-horned beetles.
- Bugscope Team Not during the winter though...there are not too many to rustle
- Bugscope Team now you can see the individual facets of another compound eye
- Student hi my name is becca how long is the wing
- Bugscope Team Becca the wing is about 7 or 8 millimeters long.
- 9:35am
- Bugscope Team this is a big housefly
- Bugscope Team those very small holes in either side of the abdomen are spiracles
- Bugscope Team Spiracles are like nostrils
- Bugscope Team insects breathe through their spiracles
- Student my name is logan how fast is a fly
- Bugscope Team it looks like there is also a haltere in this view of the fly
- Bugscope Team Logan that is something we will have to look up!
- 9:41am
- Bugscope Team here you can see spines on the fly's legs
- Bugscope Team well they fly faster than you can swat them with a flyswatter!
- Student nick how many germes are their on the fly
Bugscope Team It is hard to say exactly how many germs are on a fly. It depends where the fly has been hanging out. A kitchen is less germy than a port-a-pot
- Bugscope Team horse flies are fast, dragonflies are very fast (like 36 mph), and houseflies are about 8 km/h
- Student can we see germs on the fly
- Bugscope Team we can see germs, as bacteria, when they are there
- 9:46am
- Bugscope Team bacteria such as E coli or even anthrax are bacilli, and they are usually about 2 micrometers (microns) long
- Bugscope Team a micrometer, or micron, is one one thousandth of a millimeter
- Bugscope Team you can see how long a millimeter is in this view of the housefly
- Bugscope Team this is probably a female housefly
- Bugscope Team House flies are not major carriers of disease, well not in the US anyway
- Student do they have an autak
- Bugscope Team male housefly eyes are usually close together
- Student attack
- Bugscope Team I am not sure I understand the question...
- Bugscope Team heh, i thik all insects of some attack in the sense that they do need to feed and certain parts of their bodies are adapted to help them feed better.
- Bugscope Team Do you mean do they attack people? It seems like they really do like to bite when it is about to rain...
- Bugscope Team this is the end of someone's hair
- Bugscope Team human hair
- Bugscope Team and this is the shaft of the hair
- Bugscope Team True house flies: Musca domestica do not bite. They can't bite. They don't have any biting mouthparts
- Bugscope Team this is from a guy who was concerned that some of his hair was starting to turn white, and he wanted us to look at it.
- Student coral : do bugs get sick
Bugscope Team yes! There are many diseases that make insects sick. Viruses, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, all make insects sick.
- Bugscope Team Lots of my hair is turning white!
- 9:51am
- Bugscope Team yes insects can get sick
- Bugscope Team sometimes they get fungal diseases, for example
- Bugscope Team sometimes the fungus gets them to do odd things
- Bugscope Team Insects don't have as good an immune system as we do, and usually insects don't get well from their illnesses
- Bugscope Team i wonder if flys eat more chicken noodle soup when they are sick?
- Bugscope Team bugs can sometimes carry disease too then they are called vectors
- Student bryanna : how many hairs does a fly have
Bugscope Team thousands! the hairs are called setae (sea-tea), and they help the fly to sense it's enviornment. the setae are on the body, the eyes, the wings, all over.
- Bugscope Team Bryanna there are almost too many hairs to count.
- Bugscope Team the hairs are called 'setae.'
- Student sara:can you put your hand under the microscope and see it?
Bugscope Team sara, this microscope is actually a vacuum, meaning it's a lot like space (the air is removed), so no, you'd have to cut your hand off to put it in there, and we don't want to do that!
- Bugscope Team not in this microscope
- Bugscope Team some of the setae (pronounced see-tee) help the fly smell
- Bugscope Team this microscope has a vacuum chamber, so we cannot open it when it is running
- Bugscope Team we can show you what it looks like, thoug
- Bugscope Team h
- Bugscope Team unless someone was willing to have part of their hand cut off, but i dont think we would have any volunteers
- Student coral: could you tell that the bug is sick
Bugscope Team Yes usually you can tell there is something wrong with it. Sometimes sick insects will turn a weird color, sometimes they will stop eating or have digestive problems. Sometimes they will act weird.
- Bugscope Team scott is going to switch the scope to an internal camera, so you can see what the inside looks like
- Bugscope Team there it is
- Bugscope Team notice in the middle is the stage, that has the insects on it.
- 9:56am
- Bugscope Team above the stage is the electron beam, i think, that shoots electons at the insects on the stage.
- Student very cool
- Bugscope Team let me know when you want me to switch back to the secondary electron camera (SE)
- Bugscope Team okay, going back to SE mode now
- Bugscope Team back to the white hair
- Student evan: how old is it
- Bugscope Team sometimes other insects will do tricky bad things like inject their eggs into a living caterpillar, and that might make the caterpillar sick
- Student thank you!
- Bugscope Team this is from a guy who is in his 30's, I think. But the hair would not be 30 years old -- just a few months, likely
- Student have a great day
- Bugscope Team And sometimes, other insects will lay eggs inside an insect...that makes them really sick and they other insects wll spin cocoons on the outside of an infected insect's body! Pretty gross!
- Bugscope Team Thank You !
- Bugscope Team doh
- Bugscope Team hope you enjoyed bugscope!
- Bugscope Team ewe annie, that is gross!
- Bugscope Team Thank you all for the questions!
- Student we did, got to go now
- Bugscope Team okay, bye bye
- Bugscope Team See you next time!
- Bugscope Team if you have any other questions, just be sure to email us
- Bugscope Team bye bye
- Student bye bye
- Bugscope Team have a great day
- Bugscope Team and remember to check your member page for all the information from chat and images: http://bugscope.itg.uiuc.edu/members/2008-011
- 10:01am
- Bugscope Team over and out for me...
- Student thanks again
- Bugscope Team That is great. You know here it is so quiet...
- Bugscope Team thats great, we hope to see you again
- Bugscope Team Thanks!
- Bugscope Team ok, they logged off. going to close session now
- Bugscope Team rxl stopped, session disabled, session locked.
- Bugscope Team good session everyone. see you next time. thanks high point school!
