Connected on 2009-01-08 11:00:00 from , CA, US
- 10:49am
- Bugscope Team Good morning Mrs McCarthy!
- Bugscope Team hi, welcome to bugscope!
- Teacher good morning
- Bugscope Team we are setting up presets right now
- Teacher thank you we're still getting things set up here
- Bugscope Team we'll be done in a couple of minutes
- Bugscope Team ok, if you have any questions in the meantime, please just ask, we are here to help
- Teacher how should the kids log in on their laptops we have 2 kids per laptop
- Bugscope Team well, they should visit http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/live, and login as a student, no password
- Bugscope Team and 2 kids per laptop is a great idea
- Bugscope Team they can take turns asking questions
- Bugscope Team they can combine their names, like StephanieAmy, or however they would like to do it
- Teacher on the login it says teacher, guest, or admin do they use guest?
Bugscope Team Hmm, there should be a student login, are you trying from a different computer?
- Bugscope Team once the teacher is logged in, all future logins to that page should show up as "student", but if it's not doing that, then something is acting funky on our end. no problem, just have them login as guest
- 10:54am
- Bugscope Team it might be that the laptops are on a different network subnet, if so, then that would explain why it's not showing student as an option
- Bugscope Team our software checks for the network subnet, once the teach logs in, all future logins (from that SAME subnet) are "students"
- Bugscope Team yeah that is our fault; it's the way we have it set up so that outside visitors cannot log in as your students
- Bugscope Team does that make sense mrs. mccarthy? if student doesn't show up, just have them login as guests. functionally, guest is the same as student
- Bugscope Team so if the laptops are on a different subnet the software does not give them the 'student' option
- Bugscope Team but as Guests they will be fine
- Bugscope Team ok, sorry for the trouble. go ahead and use guest login, it will work just fine. we will try to think of a way around this problem in the future
- Bugscope Team hi students, welcome to bugscope!
- 11:00am
- Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope, online in urbana, illinois. welcome from california!
- Bugscope Team if you have any questions, please feel free to ask and we will try our best to answer
- Bugscope Team mrs. mccarthy, you now have control of the scope. we can give control to any student if you wish, just let us know
- Teacher Thank you ! Welcome to california. the kids are getting logged out after we enter their nicknames
- Bugscope Team hmm, i will call now, not sure what the problem is
- Bugscope Team let me test some things
- Teacher the message says too small to use f11
- Bugscope Team i tried calling the number on your application and got a machine, is there a phone i can reach you at now?
- Bugscope Team ah! yes, your screen resolution MUST be at least 1024x768. did you run the compatibility test from these laptops?
- Bugscope Team try changing the screen resolution to a bigger size, and see if it works then
- 11:05am
- Bugscope Team mrs. mccarthy, might be easier if we can talk on the phone. the number here is 217-265-8164. i can call you if you give me a number
- Teacher yes, but we had to change commputers at the last minute it looklike we may have figured it out
- Bugscope Team We'll get it to work....
- Bugscope Team Michelle, Jeff are you all driving?
- 11:10am
- Bugscope Team facsicle
- Teacher what is this
- Bugscope Team This is the tip of the proboscis of the mosquito.
- Bugscope Team only female mosquitoes bite
- Teacher while we wait to figure out the computers, I'll do the teacher control
- Bugscope Team I just talked with Chas, who is working on the back end as well.
- Teacher ok I have all the kids on the rug, and I'm projecting on the big screen
- 11:15am
- Bugscope Team Resourceful!
- Bugscope Team The four bees you sent are on the stub, and the two egg cases, and the two baby fruit flies.
- Bugscope Team Mrs. McCarthy, could you describe what the window looks like on the student computers? Does it say something along the lines of "If you see this message for more than 10 second..." in any of the fields?
- Teacher yes I think it did
- Teacher what are we looking at asks Moises
- Bugscope Team This is salt from a Wendy's restaurant
- Bugscope Team it is a little out of focus
- Bugscope Team There. Nice!]
- Bugscope Team I forgot to make this into a preset. This is a field of salt.
- 11:21am
- Bugscope Team now we can see some very nice looking mold spores
- Teacher do they have mold when they are alive or was it from having the bee in a jar for a while?
- Bugscope Team likely it was that brief time in the jar
- Bugscope Team this is fresh very good looking mold
- Teacher Melody likes the mold spores
- Bugscope Team Yeah they are so pretty. We were looking for pollen but have not found any yet!
- Bugscope Team The mold is breaking down the dead bee's body.
- Teacher What is an ocellus asks Kelly
Bugscope Team an ocellus is a simple eye (ocelli for plural), they are often found on flying insects, they are different from the compound eyes which have hundreds of facets and lens's, the ocellus has just one
- Bugscope Team an ocellus is a 'simple' eye
- Bugscope Team compared to a larger more complex compound eye
- Bugscope Team a lot of flying insects have three ocelli on the top of their heads in addition to the compound eyes
- Bugscope Team so really they have five eyes
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down here you can see more of the head
- Bugscope Team you are doing a great job driving, and we are sorry about the connection problems.
- Teacher Chris asks what are the things on the ocellus? Mr. Burill asks is there a preset for a compound eye?
- 11:26am
- Bugscope Team there is dust on the ocellus, perhaps shrunken mold spores
- Bugscope Team Forked hairs!!! One of the characteristics of bees are their forked hairs.
- Bugscope Team preset no. 5 is one of the compound eyes
- Bugscope Team it is interesting that you sent those tiny egg cases -- two of them -- and we also found two fruit flies, still folded from having been in the cases
- Teacher ahhhhhhhhhh oohhhhhhhh
- Bugscope Team ha it's the face of one of the bees
- Bugscope Team you can see that the compound eyes are 'hairy'
- Guest Mrs. McCarthy: In case the window-size check, which would have popped up a message like "Your browser window is smaller than the recommended size. Resize to suggested?" was the problem, I have disabled it. If one of the students tries quitting firefox and then visiting the login page again and logging in as a guest, we can see if that has helped
- Bugscope Team check out all the hairs! those hairs are called setae (see-tee), they help the bee sense its environment, kinda like cat whiskers
- Bugscope Team you can see the jaws, here, which fold open from side to side like a gate
- Teacher whats that asks Moises?
- Teacher I'll have one of our wonderful volunteers do that for us
- Bugscope Team this is the head of one of your bees
- Bugscope Team you can see the mouthparts as well, and the antennae
- Bugscope Team the compound eyes are on the side of the head, they have setae sticking out of them too
- Bugscope Team see the tiny setae on the jaw, and on the face?
- 11:31am
- Bugscope Team many of those setae are mechanosensory -- they allow the bee to feel wind and things it might be touching
- Bugscope Team these setae stick through the exoskeleton, to nerves underneath. that is how the bees sense their environment
- Teacher Karina asks were there any varooa mites on the bees?
- Bugscope Team Karina! We did not see any varroa mites.
- Bugscope Team We looked, and they are very large so we should have seen them if they were there.
- Teacher So did they probably die of natural causes
- Teacher can you see pesticide residue if there was any?
- Bugscope Team Yes, probably.
- Bugscope Team Did you find these bees somewhere around your school?
- Bugscope Team We might not recognize it if we did. But it would likely appear as tiny crystals.
- Teacher yes, the bees were collected around the school and the neighborhood
- 11:36am
- Bugscope Team And they were dead when you found them?
- Bugscope Team they are so wrinkled that we are guessing they are fruit flies
- Bugscope Team The bees--that is?
- Bugscope Team we know they are not baby bees because they have halteres
- Bugscope Team so halteres grow as the bee does? is there no haltere at all when the bee is infant? interesting!
- Bugscope Team I think the bees were dead when Mrs M found them
- Bugscope Team a bee would never have a haltere because it has four wings
- Bugscope Team oh, silly me, yes, i forgot, sorry
- Bugscope Team When a bee is a "baby" it is a larvae--like a caterpillar. It has no wings. Baby insects don't have wings (or halteres)
- Bugscope Team well we thought they might be newly hatched bees
- Bugscope Team Mrs M you can go to, for example, preset 10, if you would like
- 11:42am
- Teacher when I try to center the image it keeps moving and when I click to stop it it doesn't respond
- Bugscope Team we just reset the scope, try it again
- Bugscope Team I just took us to the folded wings
- Bugscope Team (when you click to center you do not need to click to stop)
- Bugscope Team if you still have problems just let us know, seems to be okay now
- Teacher is this the wing of the bee or the fruit fly?
- Bugscope Team (when you click to drive you do)
- Bugscope Team this is the fruit fly, and I am sorry I did not put that in the preset name
- Teacher no worries.
- Bugscope Team it is really interesting that we see all of this detail on the wing -- it looks like a moth eye
- Bugscope Team you are doing a great job of controlling the scope mrs. mccarthy, focus can be tricky, try going the other way if it's getting worse
- Bugscope Team Those individual structures are much smaller than the wavelength of visible light!
- Bugscope Team this is pretty high mag for bugscope -- you can see that the round objects on the wing are maybe 100 nm in diameter
- Bugscope Team yes as Chas says -- visible light is about 400 to 700 nm
- Bugscope Team The streaky horizontal lines are due to vibration. Even talking at a normal volume in the room can shake the microscope enough to distort the image like that
- Bugscope Team the wing is wrinkled because the fruit fly was never able to let it dry and unfold
- Bugscope Team yeah, at such a high mag, some things are difficult to focus without changing things inside the scope
- Bugscope Team he/she would also have pumped hemolymph into the wing veins to help 'inflate' the wings
- 11:47am
- Bugscope Team The consequence of something being ~4x smaller than the wavelength of visible light is that you could never see the structures clearly with an optical microscope. The electrons we're bombarding the sample with are orders of magnitude smaller, thus their ability to resolve such fine features
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag still lower you will be able to see the whole fly
- Teacher Mrs. Fischer asks is there anything on the bees that would indicated age?
Bugscope Team Well, a bee that you found outside of the hive would be a forager bee--which is the oldest of the worker bees. A normal worker bee lives about 3 weeks if it is lucky--so I would predict that this bee is about 3 weeks old.
- Bugscope Team sometimes we can see grooves in claws, or in the jaws, or scratches on the eye -- that indicate a full life
- Bugscope Team this is the compound eye of one of the bees.
- Teacher Do you see anything on this eye?
- Bugscope Team you can see a few of the ommatidia
- Bugscope Team their wings get ragged and their hair gets less "fluffy", as well
- Bugscope Team and some dirt, and all of those setae -- the hairs
- Bugscope Team now we can see many more of the ommatidia
- Teacher how many lenses on a compound eye asks Nicolle?
Bugscope Team there are many, hundreds, but it's different from eye to eye, insect to insect. flying insects usually have lots of ommatidia, it gives them better sight when flying
Bugscope Team It depends heavily on the insect. Their reliance on their sight is usually proportional to the number of lenses/ommatidia they have. For example, ants often have few enough you could count by hand, whereas a fly has hundreds to thousands
- 11:52am
- Bugscope Team insects can often see light in ultraviolet wavelengths -- light that we cannot see
- Teacher Chris asks why do bees have hairs on their eyes?
Bugscope Team i think those setae in the eye help to sense wind speed and direction, so they give the insects better flying capability. but i'm not certain, annie or someone else should confirm that
- Teacher what about bees? how many ommatidia ?
Bugscope Team Honey bees have 4500 ommatidia
- Bugscope Team per eye
- 11:57am
- Teacher what is this white feather like thing on the eye asks Kelly
- Bugscope Team one advantage of having compound eyes, compared to our eyes, is that compound eyes register motion very quickly
- Bugscope Team the tall thin thing? that's a seta, bent at the socket
- Bugscope Team the darker thing looks like dust or something
- Teacher the horizontal white thing ?
- Bugscope Team hamuli!
- Teacher Kelly says it looks like onion rings. What is it?
- Teacher are these what clip the pair of wings together
Bugscope Team absolutely--the hammuli
- Bugscope Team Yes Mrs M!
- Bugscope Team They hold the fore- and hindwings together in flight.
- Bugscope Team this is the tip of the tongue of the bee
- Teacher Kelly asks what are those hair thingys on the tongue
Bugscope Team The hairs are setae that presumably help the bee gather pollen, and some of them are likely chemosensory.
- Teacher Mrs. Fischers asks what sensory organs do they have on their tongues?
Bugscope Team Insects have many different types of hairs (or setae) that help them to sense their environment--that includes helping them to taste their food
- 12:04pm
- Teacher Chris asks what is scopa?
Bugscope Team scopa are pollen collecting hairs on the legs of bees
- Teacher Are they part of the pollen basket?
Bugscope Team yes
- Bugscope Team yes!
- Teacher Did you ever find any pollen?
- Bugscope Team it is sad but we have not found any -- maybe you can
- Bugscope Team it is pretty distinctive
- Teacher what is this on the hairs?
Bugscope Team these look like fungal mycelia
- 12:09pm
- Teacher what is this
- Teacher Can we mangnify out on any preset to see the whole bee?
- Bugscope Team yes!
- Bugscope Team now you can sort of see where you are
- Teacher the adults all say Wow!!!!!!
- Bugscope Team yeah, try zooming out, you should be able to get down to 40x or so, that'll give you a nice look at the whole bee, or part of it
- Teacher the kids are antsy!
- Bugscope Team those round flat things were sensory structures on the antennae
- Bugscope Team antsy? or beesy?
- Bugscope Team we are sorry they are not able to connect today -- it would have helped diffuse some of that energy
- Bugscope Team it is disappointing for us because we like to chat directly with the kids
- Bugscope Team chas is the mastermind of the website, and he'll be able to fix the problem, we are certain of it. we haven't seen this problem before or we would have fixed it
- 12:14pm
- Bugscope Team but you have done a great job saving the session, making something good out of it
- Teacher I I think they got a lot out of the time but the adults got even more out of the time
- Bugscope Team much of the chemosensing that insects do, especially bees, is via their antennae
- Bugscope Team the flat parts of the mouth are the maxillae
- Bugscope Team These little impressions are sensilla that are unique to bees and a few other hymeopterans
- Bugscope Team the central part of the mouth -- the hairy part -- is the proboscis, and its tip is called the glossa
- Bugscope Team this looks at first like a piece of fungus, but I think it is plant fiber
- Student what is this? asks Nicolle
- Bugscope Team as we had said earlier in the session, all of the images you are collecting go to your database and may be viewed later
- Bugscope Team this is a piece of plant fiber, but I am not sure just where we are
- Student My computer quit. I'm on another. I have to to to yard duty. Mrs. Fischer will us whatever tijme we have left. Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity!
- 12:19pm
- Bugscope Team if we decrease the magnification, we can see a little better where we are in relation to the rest of the insect
- Bugscope Team ah this is over one of the maxillae -- one of the mouthparts
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a mosquito!
- Bugscope Team it has compound eyes as well but they are shrunken -- caved in
- Bugscope Team now we see the donut-shaped base of the antenna
- Bugscope Team and we see little feather-like scales
- Bugscope Team butterflies, moths, skippers, mosquitos, and silverfish have scales
- Bugscope Team wow, look at all those deflated ommatidia!
- Bugscope Team when insects dry up, sometimes their body parts shrivel up and make weird formations
- Bugscope Team now we are imaging one of the ocelli again
- Teacher Are setae made of chitin?
Bugscope Team Yes, setae are chitin. In fact, the whole outside of the insect is chitin, more or less.
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down now you will see a different aspect of the bee's head
- 12:25pm
- Student That looks grost.
- Bugscope Team busted antenna above
- Bugscope Team whoa, look at the hole in the upper right, that's a broken socket hole, i think more of the antenna (or legs?) belongs there
- Bugscope Team antennae
- Student what is that.
- Bugscope Team the setae the antenna is rested on are plumose -- they are more frond-like
- Bugscope Team this is a hole or a bee antenna, where part of it broke off
- Bugscope Team this is the inside of a broken bee antenna
- Student what are thoes spiky things.
- Bugscope Team the spikey things are setae that cover the antenna and much of the bee's exoskeleton
- Student that looks funny.
- Student ok.
- Bugscope Team there is some dried on liquid as well
- Bugscope Team looks cool huh? setae (see-tee) help insects sense their environment, kinda like how cat whiskers work, except cats don't have an exoskelton
- 12:30pm
- Bugscope Team many of the setae on the antenna are chemosensory -- they help the bee pick up odors in the air
- Bugscope Team setae can be mechanosensory or chemosensory, at least
- Student thank you for all.
- Bugscope Team I guess that would be the definition of an odor -- that it is in the air ;)
- Teacher It looks like we are all done with our session at this end. Thank You all so very much for your time and anvery, very interesting experience ! ! !
- Bugscope Team mrs. mccarthy, don't forget....
- Bugscope Team setae can also protect the insect, by being spiky or making the insect "slippery"
- Bugscope Team all the chat and images from this session are saved to your member page, the link is....
- Bugscope Team Please connect with us again, Mrs M. We will work out the laptop connection problem
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/members/2008-123
- Bugscope Team we have done around 400 sessions in about 10 years, and there are always new glitches
- Bugscope Team setae often give the insect its color, which can camouflage them or help them to recognize each other.
- Bugscope Team setae are really important
- Teacher WE look forward to reviewing our session, and again thank you all very much ! ! !
- Student :p
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team you are very welcome. you are welcome for another session in the future!
- Bugscope Team we are sorry, again, for the connection problems. we would love to get them figured out and solved before any future session
- Student thats ok.
- 12:36pm
- Bugscope Team swaqw22, are you logged in from the classroom?
- Student yes
- Bugscope Team interesting, what is different about your computer from the laptops?
- Bugscope Team anything you can think of?
- Bugscope Team you are in Mrs M's classroom?
- Bugscope Team we are curious because the laptops couldn't stay connected before, yet you seem to be able to no problem. we would love to try and solve this problem.
- Bugscope Team Hi lfeld52!
- Bugscope Team this is the frayed edge of one of the wings
- Teacher I think the problem was at our end, our laptops are networked to a wireless cart and the students had a different connection. So that why they could only as guests.
- 12:41pm
- Bugscope Team Mrs M we should not have been bumping them off -- so we are concerned
- Bugscope Team ok, that would explain that, but getting knocked off right after you login should not happen. that is strange. swaqw22 is still logged in and must be on a different computer? not a laptop?
- Bugscope Team bumping them off the connection, even as guests
- Bugscope Team But -- we would love to do this with you again.
- Bugscope Team sometimes students do login as guests, and that should be fine. we are sorry they couldn't this time. answering hundreds of kids questions can be a blast!
- Bugscope Team Next time it fits into your curriculum.
- Bugscope Team we just want to try and fix any problems we may have, so that this connection thing doesn't happen in the future. we want the experience to be a painless as possible for the teachers and students.
- Teacher The other problem was with the error message our laptop had with the resolution. Maybe it was with Firefox.
- Bugscope Team and swaqw22 must be on a different computer, not a laptop?
- Bugscope Team You should've been able to click ok on that and keep going. According to what we thought...
- Bugscope Team ok, if you want to do another session in the future (totally!), then i can help you try to figure out what's going on with the laptops, maybe a test session or something. it is no problem, i'm sure we can figure it out
- Teacher Yes swaqw22 was using a desktop system.
- 12:46pm
- Bugscope Team i wonder if you can login as a teacher to the laptop as well? if that also doesn't work, then it might be some security software on the laptops that doesn't like what bugscope does and kills it
- Bugscope Team not sure though, we'd need to do some more testing, via phone. i am more than willing to try that in the future if you want another session. okay?
- Teacher I am on a laptop, but didn't have the same problem as the student laptops.
- Bugscope Team ah! interesting
- Bugscope Team that's strange
- Bugscope Team i'll pass that info onto chas, and we'll see if we can discover anything on our end
- Teacher Sounds good. We'll call and try a test session. Thanks.
Bugscope Team ok, thanks for the great session, you did a great job!
- 12:52pm
- Teacher I'll have to ask our tech about the router connection, good question.
- Bugscope Team ok
- Bugscope Team well, time to close the session up? or did you have any more questions?
- Student laptop shut down. thanks again! we'l be in touch. Bye everyone!
- Bugscope Team ok, nice session everyone. good bye!
