Session 2008-044 with St. Thomas the Apostle

Application

The School

The Class

The Project

Miscellaneous

Live Session Transcript

Connected on 2008-06-10 10:00:00 from West Hempstead, NY, US

• 9:08am
• Bugscope Team session enabled, rxl started, vac started
• 9:26am

• 9:33am
• Bugscope Team hi ro, welcome to bugscope, where are you from?

• Bugscope Team hi umesh!
• Bugscope Team hi anobserver, welcome to bugscope, where are you from?
• Bugscope Team hi karen, welcome to bugscope!
• Bugscope Team we are setting up for a session at 10AM
• Guest I am in Arlington, VA at a meeting for the National Science Foundation.
• Guest Hi, I work with teenagers interested in technology. Your site is cool.
• Bugscope Team thanks! we've been doing bugscope for almost 10 years, this website is version 2.0

• Guest I will let my group know about your work and the site.
• Bugscope Team if you are interested in applying for bugscope, it's easy, and we almost never reject: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/apply
• Bugscope Team Thanks Alex and Scott for responding to these questions from NSF. When the session starts, people will just observe.
• Guest Thanks for letting me know.
• Bugscope Team ah, umesh, are these guests with you?
• 9:38am

• Bugscope Team Yes, we are in a meeting. I had mentioned to Scott that people will check-in on Tues.
• Bugscope Team This is setup for today's bugscope session with St Thomas the Apostle School in West Hempstead, NY.
• Bugscope Team Alex, please respond to questions. This is great! Thanks!
• Bugscope Team We have been running bugscope since March 1999. The microscope was purchased with NSF funding for this purpose.

• Bugscope Team We run three and sometimes four sessions a week when school is in. Anyone from home schoolers to K through 12 to preservice teachers.
• Guest Hi there, can i try driving the microscopre
  Bugscope Team hi pete, we'd be happy to let you drive in a moment, we need to finish setting up presets first though, how about in 5 minutes?
• Bugscope Team we do 2-3 sessions per week. since it is summer now, and most schools are out of session, it's a little slower now
• Bugscope Team We are on the curriculum of some school districts.
• Bugscope Team We are setting up for the school today, and that is our priority right now.

• Guest So, what kind of bug is it and what are the students going to learn aobut today?
• Guest yes, that will be great. Thx

• 9:43am
• Bugscope Team What the kids today want to see is a butterfly wing, a leg, a spiracle, and a compound eye. We will try to show them more than that.

• Bugscope Team We like to find places on the stub -- on the sample -- that will pique the kids' iinterest and make them want to follow through.
• Bugscope Team Thanks, Scott. Karen is a NSF program officer focusing on technology and K-12.
• Bugscope Team If they see a mite, for example, on something, we want them to take the mag down to see just where it is -- as on the eye of an earwig.

• Bugscope Team One priority is to have the kids actually understand that they are controlling a $600,000 electron microscope -- these are not just static images.
• Bugscope Team We want them to ask about the insects/arthropods, the electron microscope, why the images are not in color, and eventually, if we have done our job -- what we had to study to get the jobs we have.

• Bugscope Team We want the kids to be intrigued, have a good time, and recognize that we have a great time doing this.
• 9:48am
• Bugscope Team We try to have a rapport among ourselves on this end, and have that show, and include the kids as soon as they begin participating.
• Bugscope Team We have done a little over 350 sessions in 9 years. We often have an entomologist on board -- she may be here when the connection starts at 11 your time.
• Guest So, why is it in black and white?
• Bugscope Team hello mrs. b, welcome to bugscope!
• Bugscope Team mrs b, we are just finishing up the presets, we'll be ready for you in a sec
• Teacher Hello! Thank you for having us!
• Bugscope Team just a moment...
• Bugscope Team Karen we are using electrons to capture the images we see, not light. Electrons are much smaller than visible light. But if that were not the case we would get gray scale anyway, since the secondary electron detector captures images as signal intensity and does not see color.
• Bugscope Team Hi Mrs B!
• Bugscope Team okay, presets are done, i've unlocked the session, mrs. b you now have control of the scope!
• 9:53am
• Bugscope Team Mrs B we have some guests from NSF with us, in the DC area.
• Teacher This is so exciting!
• Bugscope Team mrs. b, the current image you are looking at is a fruit fly. the punch-bag looking thing is called a haltere, and just to the right is a spiracle (breathing hole)
• Bugscope Team This is a fruit fly haltere, and you can see a thoracic spiracle to the right of it.
• Bugscope Team hah Alex beat me all the way.
• Bugscope Team :)
• Bugscope Team mrs. b, you should see controls for the microscope on the right side of your browser: magnify, navigation, focus and adjust. please feel free to drive the scope at your will
• Teacher what is a haltere
• Bugscope Team The haltere has hypertrophied mechanoreceptors on its shaft. It beats opposite the way the wings beat and provides a sort of balance to the movement of the wings.
• Bugscope Team It is like a gyroscope, in a way.
• Bugscope Team you can also click on any preset image, and the scope will move to that preset. clicking on a preset is a nice way to get back to an image if you are lost or want to see something new
• Bugscope Team The haltere may be a modified hindwing that has evolved to have a balancing function.
• Bugscope Team Halteres are found in Diptera -- two-winged flies.
• Bugscope Team If we were to look at a bee or wasp we would see that they have four wings.
• Bugscope Team mrs. b, the magnification range of the scope is about 30x - 600,000x, although for bugscope, we rarely go much past 20,000-30,000x as top magnification
• Bugscope Team ah, this is the full side view of a fruit fly
• Bugscope Team 4 wings and no haltere
• Bugscope Team please feel free to ask any questions you or your students might have, we will do our best to answer

• 9:58am
• Bugscope Team Because it is more efficient to fly with two rather than four wings, wasps and bees have little hooks on one set of wings so that the fore- and hindwings attach in flight. To function as one wing per side.
• Teacher is this one of the wings?
• Bugscope Team nope, this is an eye!
• Bugscope Team this is very uncommon, for us -- this compound eye with lots of setae in between the ommatidia.
• Bugscope Team it is a compound eye
• Teacher An eye of what?
• Bugscope Team the individual facets are called ommatidia.

• Bugscope Team we arent sure, maybe some sort of mosquito
• Bugscope Team If you take the magnification down you should be able to see where we are.
• Bugscope Team you can take down the mag

• Bugscope Team it is a bit squished and dried out
• Bugscope Team There are so many different insects, and when we get them sometimes they are not easily recognizable -- so sometimes we don't know what we have in the 'scope.
• Bugscope Team this looks like a mosquito, as Cate said.

• Teacher what is this part?
• Bugscope Team some insects have thinner cuticle -- thinner chitin -- compared to others.
• Bugscope Team this is the head of the mosquito
• Bugscope Team this is the head, to the bottom, and part of the thorax, above.
• Teacher what isthis little black area?
• Bugscope Team you can see what looks like the proboscis, sticking out of the head, pointing to the NE
• Bugscope Team it is so small that when we mounted it we could not see what it was.
• Bugscope Team the black circles are where the antennae used to be.

• Bugscope Team the head is deflated, like a basketball
• 10:04am
• Bugscope Team this may be a male mosquito -- the females are the ones that bite
• Bugscope Team insects are usually much 'hairier' than we expect
• Bugscope Team notice how hairy the insects are. those hairs are called setae (see-tee). they function like cat whiskers, they help the insect to sense its environment
• Bugscope Team the 'hairs' are called 'setae'

• Bugscope Team some of the setae are chemosensory -- they are used to smell the air
• Bugscope Team since insects have a hard exoskeleton, and can't feel with that exoskeleton, the setae connect to nerves underneath the exoskeleton, and that's how the insects feels things

• Bugscope Team insects and similar arthropods do not have skin, as Alex says, so they need a means of sensing their environment
• Bugscope Team through the cuticle

• Teacher we thought the scales were flat and oval and surprised to see that they are not
• Bugscope Team they are very beautiful, like tiny feathers
• Bugscope Team yeah, isn't it cool how different insects look under an electron microscope!
• Bugscope Team they can come in a few different shapes, they dont all look like these
• Bugscope Team it is hard to keep them from charging up in the electron beam because they are not easy to ground

• Bugscope Team there are some things that were discovered only AFTER scientists started looking at bugs under a microscope. things like brochosomes were not known to exists before then.
• Bugscope Team all of the things we are looking at using the scanning electron microscope today have been coated with several nanometers of gold-palladium
• Teacher why do the oens in the back look more spikey?
• Bugscope Team the gold-palladium makes the 'bugs' conductive
• Bugscope Team ah, yes, and notice the scale bar at the lower left of the image, that gives you a measure of how big things are
• 10:09am
• Bugscope Team some of them are indeed more spikey, and they may have another function, more like normal sensory setae
• Bugscope Team in the scale bar, 1 um = one micron = one millionth of a meter
• Bugscope Team the scales come off very easily, and they help butterflies, moths, and skippers slip out of spider webs
• Teacher what is a skipper?
• Bugscope Team they are also responsible for some of the colors we see -- the colors may be formed by the shape of the scale rather than a pigment
• Bugscope Team a skipper is similar to a butterfly; it has a few distinct differences
• Bugscope Team they have short wings, thick bodies, and fly fast, almost a third of all North American butterflies (around 200 species) are skippers
• Bugscope Team here is a cool image of a skipper butterfly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Green_Grass-Dart.jpg
• Bugscope Team by the way mrs. b, all the chat and images are saved to your bugscope member page, i'll send you the link after the session
• Teacher thank you sooo much!

• Bugscope Team skippers hold their wings differently compared to butterflies, and their antennae are club-shaped with a little hook at the end

• Bugscope Team their bodies are also generally thicker

• 10:14am

• Bugscope Team this is the eye of the moth up close

• Bugscope Team or butterfly --
• Teacher \what are those bumpy areas called?
  Bugscope Team those bumps are the individual facets of the compound eye, they are called ommatidia
• Bugscope Team the hexagonal shapes are the ommatidia
• Bugscope Team the individual facets of the eye
• Bugscope Team each ommatidia has a lens in it and gets an image and sends it to the bug brain

• Teacher it is interesting to see that the comppund eyes look like honeycombs

• Bugscope Team but unlike human eyes, the lens cannot move. so that's why it's thought the insect has all these ommatidia, so that it can see a wide range (wide angle view) but without having to develop complex eye movement... i think

• Bugscope Team the honeycomb shape allows gives the eye curvature
• Bugscope Team compound eyes are very sensitive to motion -- they register motion more readily than our eyes
• Bugscope Team that is why flies can see us and get away so easily
• Bugscope Team to a fly we seem to move very slowly

• Bugscope Team now we see bacteria
• Bugscope Team on this small beetle
• Bugscope Team germs!
• 10:20am
• Bugscope Team this is an interesting beetle -- usually they do not have scales like this one

• Bugscope Team they are the small rod shaped objects
• Teacher was this beetle sick?
• Bugscope Team there are also mold spores apparent at high mag
• Bugscope Team this all likely happened after it died

• Bugscope Team fungus and bacteria move in quickly and make things rot -- or we would be miles deep in dead bugs all of the time
• Bugscope Team and other things...
• Bugscope Team bacilli -- the rod-shaped bacteria -- are usually about 2 microns long. We can see that these are much longer.

• Bugscope Team crickets are often kind of boring to look at but this is kind of cool

• Bugscope Team this may be collapsed -- dehydrated
• Teacher what is a palp?
  Bugscope Team it helps the insect taste or manipulate food
• Bugscope Team one antenna is visible below and to the left
• 10:25am

• Bugscope Team you can see some of the spider's limbs to the right and top

• Bugscope Team of the screen
• Bugscope Team the spider's abdomen is to the right

• Bugscope Team where the spinnerets are
• Bugscope Team the head of the cricket is due south

• Bugscope Team It has lots of what are likely chemosensory setae

• Bugscope Team with which the insect can small the air and taste its prospective food
• Bugscope Team smell the air I should have said

• Bugscope Team this is what allows the ladybug to walk on vertical surfaces
• 10:30am
• Bugscope Team or ceilings
• Bugscope Team these are tiny setae that work like little suction cups
• Teacher is this the ladybugs legs?
  Bugscope Team these are special setae (hairs) on ladybug legs

• Bugscope Team they are sticky, and in great numbers allow the ladybug to hold onto things

• Bugscope Team this is on the leg -- on the tarsi

• Bugscope Team there is a claw
• Bugscope Team taking the mag down lets us see where we were

• Bugscope Team and this is a pad called a pulvillus

• Bugscope Team which has the tenent setae on it

• Bugscope Team now we see more of the body
• Bugscope Team we mount most insects upside down -- ventral side up -- so that you can see the limbs and the mouthparts
• Bugscope Team there isnt usually anything interesting on their backs
• Bugscope Team the head will be to the north
• Bugscope Team yeah they have smooth backs -- the elytra are the wing covers

• Bugscope Team now you can see the head, and one of the eyes, and an antenna

• 10:35am
• Bugscope Team oops not now

• Bugscope Team now see the head, streamlined into the body?

• Bugscope Team ladybugs have palps that are shaped like little vacuum cleaner nozzles

• Teacher is this it?

• Bugscope Team this is a ladybug, near the top left is it's mouth area, which is really wild looking
• Bugscope Team just above shaped like a triangle, an inverted triangle
• Bugscope Team there are two of them
• Bugscope Team and there is an antenna coming out of the head area, pointing to the SE

• Bugscope Team there cool!
• Bugscope Team and notice the compound eye near the right
• Bugscope Team the mouth is very complicated looking
• Bugscope Team you can see the dumps (ommatidia) of the compound eye
• Bugscope Team bumps?
• Bugscope Team yes yes, bumps! oops, typo, sorry
• 10:40am

• Bugscope Team spiders have interesting looking setae
• Bugscope Team setae that are sensitive to vibrations

• Bugscope Team the setae look like slender evergreen trees

• Bugscope Team the spider's head is to the north

• Bugscope Team you can see that the abdomen, after the spider died, shrank quite a bit

• Bugscope Team spiders have soft bodies compared to most insects

• Bugscope Team well they arent insects even, they are arachnids

• Teacher do all spiders have fangs?

• Bugscope Team these are the fangs. they have poison pores, but the one we can see has some gunk over it
• Bugscope Team yes all spiders have fangs

• Teacher where are then poison pores?
• 10:45am
• Bugscope Team at the tips

• Bugscope Team spiders inject venom into their prey

• Bugscope Team and the venom dissolves the insides of the 'bug'

• Bugscope Team then they suck the dissolved insides out, like a milkshake
• Bugscope Team or for us, depending on the spider, will hurt a lot
• Bugscope Team this pore is clogged

• Bugscope Team recluse spiders are dangerous because their venom can cause our tissues to ulcerate -- to die at the place we were bitten
• Bugscope Team tissue necrosis
• Teacher thank you very much for showing us these slides, unfortunatesly we must go to lunch. We truly enjoyed this experience.
• Bugscope Team milkshakes for munch
• Bugscope Team lunch
• Bugscope Team these are all live images of the bugs
• Bugscope Team thank you mrs. b, your images and chat are all saved at: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-044
• Bugscope Team Thank You for connecting today!
• Bugscope Team thank you for your great questions
• Bugscope Team remember though, these aren't slides, you were controlling a $600,000 microscope live!
• Bugscope Team we will look forward to seeing you next year
• Bugscope Team okay, let's close up the session
• 10:50am
• Bugscope Team rxl stopped, session disabled, locked