Session 2008-105 with Thomas Jefferson

Application

The School

The Class

The Project

Miscellaneous

Live Session Transcript

Connected on 2008-11-19 08:30:00 from , IL, US

• 7:30am
• Bugscope Team Good morning!

• Teacher Good morning!
• Bugscope Team Good Morning!
• 7:36am
• Teacher Did you receive the darlking beetle and mealworm larva we sent?
• Bugscope Team I am making the presets for today's session.
• Bugscope Team We got the beetle and the larvae, yes, Thank you.
• Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope we are just setting up now and will have the session ready in a bit
• Bugscope Team we received them, but the larvae were alive so we had to freeze them
• Teacher Great! We will come back to you at 8:30!
• Bugscope Team Good deal. See you then!
• Teacher Sorry! I thought the larva was dead!
• Bugscope Team so did we until we tried to pick them up :p

• 7:42am

• Bugscope Team hey alex

• Bugscope Team hi folks
• 7:48am

• 7:54am

• 8:00am

• 8:06am

• Bugscope Team Alright, presets are done, session is unlocked.
• 8:13am
• Bugscope Team Miss Maxwell we are ready to roll. The first presets -- the highest numbers -- are mealworm and darkling beetle locations.
• 8:18am

• 8:32am

• Bugscope Team this is a spiracle opening
• Teacher Good Morning - My second graders and I are just starting by looking at each of the presets.
• Teacher We would like to know what a spiracle is!
  Bugscope Team a spiracle is a breathing hole, usually found on the abdomen on many insects. insects don't breath through their mouths like people do, but rather through these holes (spiracles) on the sides of their bodies
• Bugscope Team cool, welcome to bugscope students!
• Bugscope Team on one of the body segments of the mealworm exoskeleton
• Bugscope Team if you take the magnification down a little you will be able to see where it is on the body

• Bugscope Team and this is the tip of one of the legs

• Bugscope Team this is the face, upside down
• Bugscope Team we can see the jaws on either side, and two sets of palps
• Teacher Wow! Cool!
• Bugscope Team mandibular and maxillary palps
• Bugscope Team the big mouthparts are the jaws and the 2 sets of smaller parts are the palps
• Teacher What are the things that look like eyes?
  Bugscope Team those are a set of palps, they help to manipulate or taste food
• Teacher Also, what are palps?
• Bugscope Team the little stalk-like things are the palps
• 8:37am
• Teacher The kids think that is cool and awesome!
• Bugscope Team you can see that one of the jaws is cracked, like the mealworm was eating unpopped popcorn

• Bugscope Team thanks kids! we like this too. :)
• Teacher We are going to start with this and zoom in and out for a bit!
• Bugscope Team this is the other end of the same shed exoskeleton
• Bugscope Team good deal

• Teacher What are the two prickly things that look like horns?
• Bugscope Team we are not sure what those pointy things are -- they may be sensory spines that allow the mealworm to feel something coming up behind it
• Teacher This question is from a student named Joe - How come the outside of it looks like skin?
• Bugscope Team it looks like skin and we often think of it that way but it is more like a shell
• Bugscope Team that is the exoskeleton, and it is made of material like your fingernails
• Bugscope Team or like the shell of a shrimp
• Bugscope Team insects have their skeleton on the outside of the body
• 8:42am
• Bugscope Team scot always says lobsters are like big bugs we like to eat!
• Teacher Ha!

• Bugscope Team yeah, whereas humans have bones inside their body, and that helps to keep us intact, insects don't have bones inside their bodies, and thus need the exoskeleton to help keep them intact
• Bugscope Team I had lobster bisque at lunch yesterday. Like hemolymph soup.
• Teacher So are we looking at the inside of the mealworm, underneath the exoskeleton?
• Bugscope Team this is still part of the outside

• Bugscope Team some parts are softer than other parts
• Bugscope Team it is kind of oily here and does not image very well
• Bugscope Team nice focussing!
• Bugscope Team you are doing a great job of controlling the scope miss maxwell

• Bugscope Team yea i was just going to say the same thing as alex
• Teacher Thank you!

• Bugscope Team the samples we are looking at are in a vacuum, inside the microscope specimen chamber, and we are beaming electrons at them

• Bugscope Team the samples have all been coated with several nanometers (billionths of a meter) of gold-palladium

• 8:47am
• Bugscope Team so if we were to see them outside of the microscope, they would look silvery
• Bugscope Team this is one of the claws -- the mealworm has tiny pointy claws at the tips of its feet
• Teacher What are the smaller spikes coming off the side in the distance?
• Bugscope Team we are sorry you cant see the pupae today, they seemed to want to keep on living
• Bugscope Team those little spikes help the mealworm keep a grip on whatever it is walking on

• Bugscope Team right into the mouth

• Bugscope Team miss maxwell, just a quick explanation on why all these images are black and white...

• Bugscope Team this is part of its last meal before it came out of its exoskeleton and either became a pupa or just stayed a mealworm but was larger
• Bugscope Team the microscope is an electron microscope, and thus it doesn't use light to gather the image, but rather electrons are beamed at the bugs, and those electrons knock off other electrons (the gold-palladium), and those are collected by an detector, and that's how the image is gathered
• 8:52am
• Teacher What is that slimy stuff asks Aram and the other 2nd graders?

• Bugscope Team maybe it is a coating it had on it before it died
• Bugscope Team this is a compound eye

• Bugscope Team lots of flying insects have these compound eyes
• Bugscope Team it helps them to see better when they are flying
• Teacher What is that flaky stuff?
• Bugscope Team each "bump" here is called an ommatidia, and each one has a lens in it

• Bugscope Team the flakey stuff is debris -- dirt, mostly
• Bugscope Team the rod-shaped things are bacilli -- they are bacteria
• Bugscope Team scott, are some of those flakes bacteria?

• Bugscope Team ah, cool!
• Bugscope Team this preset moved a little since we made it but you can see bacteria to the upper left
• Bugscope Team and lower right as well i think
• Bugscope Team yes!
• Teacher Kate asks why it looks like a bird's footprint?!

• 8:57am

• Teacher The 2nd graders say it looks like Captain Hook's hook!

• Bugscope Team ha! true, if captain hook was really really small

• Bugscope Team maybe it is the angles of the exoskeleton, which is kind of crinkly, that makes it look like a bird footprint
• Bugscope Team haha this is a common type of claw you will see on beetles

• Bugscope Team notice the scale bar in the lower left of the image. 1 um = one micron = one millionth of a meter

• Bugscope Team so 1000 um = one millimeter

• Teacher One of the kids would like to know if we can move left or right?
  Bugscope Team sure! check out the "navigation" tools you can use click to drive or click to center. click to center is a little easier to use at first

• Bugscope Team Cool!

• Teacher Is this his head?
  Bugscope Team yes!
• 9:02am
• Bugscope Team yes!
• Bugscope Team yay!
• Bugscope Team see the antennae?

• Bugscope Team it has curly segmented antennae
• Bugscope Team the eyes are tucked underneath
• Teacher Yes!
• Bugscope Team you can see the eyes now, very well

• Bugscope Team the eyes are the bumpy parts right underneath the antennae
• Bugscope Team and the jaws, and the adult versions of the palps we saw earlier

• Teacher So we are looking at the mouth now right?
• Bugscope Team see the jaws, which open and close like a gate?
• Bugscope Team yes this is the mouth
• Teacher Arek would like to know if there are 2 claws on the beetle and only 1 claw on the mealworm?

• Teacher What's the hairy stuff?
  Bugscope Team they are just that-- hairs! but for insects they are called setae. these setae probably help filter out different things from getting in
• Bugscope Team there should be a claw for each leg
• Teacher Brent would like to know if you can open and close the mouth jaws for us or are they stationary?
  Bugscope Team I wish we could open and close the jaws for you, but they would probably break, and they are very small
• Bugscope Team yes the beetle -- the adult -- has two claws on the end of each leg, but the mealworm, which is a larva, has only one claw at the tip of each leg
• 9:08am
• Bugscope Team think of it like a mustache
• Teacher Okay! Thanks anyway! This is really cool!

• Bugscope Team Miss Maxwell if you have time to tour some of the other presets, the kids might enjoy them. Maybe even after the session...
• Bugscope Team this is the tip of one of the antennae
• Bugscope Team the antennae have lots of sensory features in them
• Bugscope Team insects can taste the air -- like smelling -- and they can sense different chemical smells
• Teacher Are those dots?
• Teacher Are those for smelling/sensing?
• Bugscope Team yes they are tiny dots, and the dots are probably little sensors for chemicals in the air
• Bugscope Team yes!

• Bugscope Team we put most of the insects on their backs so we can see the legs and the mouthparts

• 9:13am

• Teacher What is that area up in the upper left hand corner above the eye?
• Teacher How many lenses are there in this eye approximately?
• Bugscope Team that is part of the mouth to the upper left, and there are probably 150 to 200 individual facets to these eyes
• Bugscope Team the individual facets are called ommatidia

• Bugscope Team having a compound eye gives you great sensitivity to motion
• Bugscope Team Yay!

• Bugscope Team that was salt, from a Wendy's restaurant.

• Bugscope Team the claw!

• Bugscope Team you can see from this claw that the beetle would have trouble walking on a wall or ceiling
• Teacher What are the claw looking things in the middle of the leg?

• 9:18am
• Bugscope Team some beetles do not walk on their claws but rest their weight on those spines

• Bugscope Team the salt!
• Teacher They look like ice cubes!
• Bugscope Team sodium chloride crystals are always cubic
• Bugscope Team like little ice cubes, yeah!

• Bugscope Team this is the tongue of a bee, and you can see their version of the same palps we saw on the beetle and the mealworm
• Bugscope Team it looks like a broom
• Bugscope Team if you move to the left you can see the head

• Bugscope Team uh oh

• Bugscope Team sometimes the presets we make at high mag shift a little

• Bugscope Team the head is so very big we cannot see all of it at once

• Bugscope Team the thing that looks smooth is the eye
• Bugscope Team and the little bumps on the top of the head are ocelli -- simple eues
• Bugscope Team eyes
• Bugscope Team you can see one of the antennae as well -- it is broken

• Teacher What is a proboscis?
• Bugscope Team ah this is the part of the mosquito that blood flows into
• 9:23am
• Bugscope Team a proboscis is what we call the extended mouthparts, or the nose, sometimes, on an elephant, for example
• Bugscope Team insects do not have noses

• Bugscope Team this is a closeup view of the scales on a butterfly wing

• Bugscope Team these are the things that seem like powder on the wing -- they make it feel silky
• Bugscope Team they come off easily
• Teacher sorry lost you for a minute!
• Bugscope Team if the butterfly was to fly into a spiderweb it might be able to get away by shedding the scales that are stuck to the web.
• Bugscope Team glad you are back!
• Bugscope Team the scales are kind of like tiny feathers
• Bugscope Team yes Alex will give you the member page info...
• Bugscope Team miss maxwell: all the chat and images are saved to you bugscope members page: http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-105
• Bugscope Team Thank You!
• 9:32am

• Bugscope Team Wendy's Salt

• Bugscope Team Butterfly Wing Scales

• Bugscope Team Head of Owlfly Larva
• Bugscope Team the owlfly is related to antions, and you can see that here
• Bugscope Team antlions

• Bugscope Team not antions ;)

• Bugscope Team Biofilm (Bacteria) on Tick
• Bugscope Team this is a dried biofilm

• Bugscope Team this is the tick's body
• Bugscope Team Tick Head

• Bugscope Team Beetle names "Lucky"

• Bugscope Team Plant Fiber on Assassin Bug

• 9:37am

• Bugscope Team Assassin Bug Head

• Bugscope Team Mosquito Ommatidia of Compound Eye

• Bugscope Team Mosquito Proboscis

• Bugscope Team Mosquito Stylet

• Bugscope Team Bee Tongue

• Bugscope Team Bee Antenna Ball and Socket

• Bugscope Team Darkling Beetle Head

• Bugscope Team Darkling Beetle Mouth

• 9:43am
• Bugscope Team Beetle Claw
• Bugscope Team okay, shutting down session, nice session everyone!
• Bugscope Team rxl stopped, session disabled, locked, chow!