Connected on 2010-01-12 12:30:00 from Milwaukee, WI, US
- 11:37am
- Bugscope Team starting presets
- 11:42am
- Bugscope Team hello mr. stout, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team we are currently setting up presets for your session
- Teacher Thank you sir! I'm pumped about this. I did it at Marquette last year and now have a fifth grade classroom. Were you able to use the bugs I sent? Sorry it was so late.
- Bugscope Team hmm, i'm not sure we got any bugs from you, we don't think we did anyway. if we did, we made a mistake
- Bugscope Team but we've got a nice collection in the scope today
- 11:48am
- Teacher Woops...sorry about that. I sent them last week Wednesday, but no worries. Looks like we've got some good ones here.
- Bugscope Team it's okay, i would we should have gotten them from wednesday, maybe we messed up on our end.
- Bugscope Team we'll probably get notice of their arrival this afternoon, hope it is not a problem for you. and we'll be able to use them for another session.
- 11:53am
- Teacher okay...no problem. Are the images going to be rotating like this throughout the session or will we be able to stop and observe a particular part of the bug?
- Bugscope Team well, you have control of the scope, so you can do the session however you please. we can always help though, or even drive if you wish
- Bugscope Team um, you WILL have control of the scope, once we finish the preset, i mean
- Bugscope Team Mr Stout we are just setting up for your session now. Ordinarily you might not even see this part. When we're done, you will have a set of presets along the right side of the chat box to choose from.
- Bugscope Team We're making the presets now, doing our own assay of the sample. Of course you are welcome to watch and comment.
- 11:58am
- Bugscope Team Mr Stout are you going to have students log in on their own computers today, or are you working with a projector or smartboard?
- Teacher Just me on the computer...they will be fielding questions about the slides through me
- 12:03pm
- Bugscope Team cool, but make sure to tell them these are not slides, these are live images from an electron microscope, and you will be controlling that microscope as well
- 12:09pm
- Teacher you got it!
- Bugscope Team okay, we are done with presets, i unlocked the session, you should see controls on the right side now
- Bugscope Team you can practice driving a bit if you like?
- Bugscope Team please ask any questions if you should have them
- Teacher okay bell is ringing and they are coming in from lunch...i'm going to introduce you and this project. Anything I should say to get them going?
- Bugscope Team yes you now have control of a $600,000 microscope.
- 12:14pm
- Bugscope Team the scope using electrons to gather the image, not light, that's what it's black and white
- Bugscope Team that's why it's black and white - because the images we collect are signal, not wavelengths of light
- 12:20pm
- 12:26pm
- Teacher we're here and all at the projector
- Bugscope Team hello everyone!
- Teacher can you introduce yourselves and what you do?
- Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team well, i'm alex, a systems admin with the group, i'm here for tech support and also to chat with the students about insects. i've learned a lot about insects from doing bugscope for the last few years
- Bugscope Team I'm Cate and I help put together the samples (like what you see today), help with setup, and am here to assist in answering any questions you have. I am a microscope technician and have a degree in physics
- Bugscope Team this image you are seeing is a live image from an electron microscope
- Bugscope Team Alex, Scot, and I are all in the same lab, but not in the same room
- Bugscope Team You will see some puncture holes in the insects you see today because they were mounted on a board from a project
- Bugscope Team I'm Scot, and I am an electron microscopist, with a degree in English and Biology.
- Teacher im trying to center it to see the whole bug
Bugscope Team under navigation, use "click to center", just click in the image, near the bottom of the screen, then it will move to that location
- Bugscope Team you may not be able to see the whole dude
- 12:31pm
- Bugscope Team there you go, nice job
- Bugscope Team the microscope cannot go lower in mag with this setup. we're at 38x.
- Teacher so what are we looking at, scot?
- Bugscope Team yes, the microscope can magnify up to 800,000x, but for bugs, 40x - 40,000x is best
- Bugscope Team this is an assassin bug on its dorsal side, so we are looking at the ventrum.
- Bugscope Team we see its head at the top and one of its eyes, and its piercing proboscis.
- Bugscope Team there is also a hole in its thorax where it had once been pinned after it was collected.
- Bugscope Team all insects have six legs, and they often have claws, at least two of which we can see
- Bugscope Team notice all those hairs. well, those are not hairs, they are called setae (pronounced see-tee), and they help the insect sense its environment
- Bugscope Team it looked like there was a dustmite of something further down on the thorax
- Bugscope Team hi Michele!
- Bugscope Team this is the compound eye, one of them
- Bugscope Team you can just start to see the facets of the eye, called ommatidia
- Guest Well done Mr. Stout!! Hi everyone!
- Teacher we want to see the eye!
- Bugscope Team insects have a hard exoskeleton, and so they need those setae in order to feel their way around. setae are sensory, and can sense chemicals (chemosensory setae) or movement (mechanosensory setae), etc.
- Bugscope Team one of the entomologists we worked with yesterday, Rob, said that each ommatidium collects a single photon of light. I am not sure how that works.
- Bugscope Team welcome ms. korb!
- Bugscope Team kind of looks like bacteria there, but it's hard to tell.
- Bugscope Team sometimes the individual facets are very distinct; here they are a little difficult to see
- Teacher why are the eyes bumpy?
Bugscope Team some of the bumps are the ommatidia themselves, and some are dirt or juju that is stuck to the surface
- 12:36pm
- Bugscope Team yeah, each one of those bumps (ommatidia - single one is called an ommatidium) has a lens in it
- Bugscope Team we'll be able to compare them with others, from other insects today
- Bugscope Team in the background we see silver paint
- Guest You guys are fast microscope drivers! Cool shots!
- Bugscope Team this is the base of the proboscis
- Teacher do they have teeth?
Bugscope Team They don't have teeth no. They have a pair of hinged jaws they use to cut into things. Sometimes these jaws will have serrations on them that look like teeth though
- Bugscope Team you can see a bit of a scale to the right
- Bugscope Team insects have tons of setae all over, they are really necessary for the insect to sense it's way around
- Teacher Jaden wants to know how long its takes to get a degree in Physics?
Bugscope Team well I have a bachelor degree in physics, but it took me 4 1/2 years college to get it
- Teacher Christian wants to know how why its called an assassin bug?
Bugscope Team assassin bugs prey on other bugs. they attack them with that sharp proboscis
- Bugscope Team you must like science and math to get one :)
- 12:42pm
- Bugscope Team insects like this, which is a true bug, have a single piercing mouthpart that may inject venom into its prey, and whether it does that or not it sucks the juice out of its prey. some true bugs do not eat other insects. they use their proboscises to penetrate plant stems, or leaves, or fruits
- Bugscope Team normally it takes 4 years to get a degree, but you can continue onto graduate school for another 2-6 years, sometimes longer. i know a dude who's still going to graduate school in his 50's!
- Guest Your wasp claw setting looks really cool and scary!!
- Bugscope Team so it is an assassin because it kills other insects
- Bugscope Team mr. stouut, don't forget to click on any other preset, it'll move to that location
- Teacher how do i get to a different preset?
Bugscope Team click on it
- Bugscope Team stout, my mistake
- Guest Whoah! Cool!!!!
- Bugscope Team you can scroll down through the list to get to the claw, when you are ready. it is preset 7
- Bugscope Team you can see the lamellated antennae there
- Bugscope Team and you can see two sets of palps
- Guest Mr. Stout - you can ask the Bugscope people to "drive the microscope" for you if you want to see anything specific :) I just learned that!
- Bugscope Team sure, we can drive while you ask question, if you want. whatever you prefer
- 12:47pm
- Teacher Zac asks what the importance of antenna are?
Bugscope Team they are used to communicate with other insects and also to smell things or feel things. They can collect chemical information
- Bugscope Team palps are accessory mouthparts, like extra limbs, that help the insect taste (because they have "tastebuds," or chemoreceptors, on them) and manipulate its food.
- Teacher Do bugs or insects see in black and white, or color?
Bugscope Team they see in color, often, although not all of the colors we see, sometimes. they can (some of them) also see in the ultraviolet (UV), which we cannot. some flowers reflect UV light to attract insects.
- Teacher Can I ask you, Scot or Alex or Cate to drive the microscope? I am having trouble getting to other presets. I can control the questions on this side if you control.
Bugscope Team no problem
- Bugscope Team i think alex likes to drive
- Bugscope Team okay, i'll start driving
- Bugscope Team this is the wasp claw, but actually Mr S you can ask us to go wherever you would like
- Teacher It looks like the legs are broken? Are they joints?
Bugscope Team often some of the legs are broken because Cate is a savage when she makes the sample
- 12:52pm
- Bugscope Team if you click on the scalebar in the lower left portion of the screen you can get the 'scope parameters to show up on the screen
- Guest Nice image!
- Bugscope Team actually I am joking, and I made this sample, anyway
- Teacher How long does a bug live?
Bugscope Team some live one season, some live only a few days, some can live for years
- Guest This makes for a great image for creative writing :)
- Teacher What is the difference between a bug and an insect?
Bugscope Team bugs are insects, they are just more specialized. They have a piercing mouthpart- proboscis\
- Bugscope Team there's the extension limb
- Bugscope Team now going to the scales
- Bugscope Team you can also see a scale there from another insect
- Bugscope Team butterflies, moths, silverfish, mosquitos, and some (very few) beetles and weevils have scales
- Teacher Now to the adaptations that insects have to help them survive? What on an insect helps it breath?
- Guest Great question - there is a preset on trachea huh?
- Teacher So is a mosquito a bug?
Bugscope Team a mosquito is an insect, and we call it a bug informally, but it is not a true bug
- Bugscope Team if you had scales and flew into a spider's web, you might be able to slip out by leaving the scales stuck to the web while you got away
- Guest Or spiracles...
- Bugscope Team shall i go to the teachea?
- Bugscope Team stink bugs, milkweed bugs, assassin bugs, cicadas, leafhoppers, and aphids are true bugs
- Bugscope Team going to the trachea
- 12:57pm
- Guest Nice!
- Bugscope Team those are the tubes in the middle of the image
- Teacher This is what an insect uses to breath?
- Bugscope Team the mouth part of a mosquito is a bit different. It has many different parts that pierce and cut
- Teacher Can you see these from the outside? Or did you cut the sample?
Bugscope Team you cannot normally see tracheae -- the tubes inside the exoskeleton that distribute air to the organs -- but this critter was busted open here.
- Bugscope Team it is true that mosquitos have piercing mouthparts, though, but another criterion for being a true bug (Hemiptera) is a particular configuration of the elytra -- the shell that cover the wings. of the
- Teacher How can you tell if a bug is a male or female? Or is there a difference?
Bugscope Team sometimes you cannot tell, at alll, from the outside. sometimes females are quite a bit larger. sometimes the males have frilly antennae and the females do not. in some flies, the male's eyes are close together, like Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the female's eyes are far apart, like Uma Thurman.
- Guest That is truly awesome!
- Bugscope Team notice the scale bar in the lower left, 22 um, that's 22 microns. one micron = one millionth of one meter
- Guest These structures are usually shown drawn in a textbook. It is great to see them for real!
- Teacher How do bugs withstand cold in this very cold winter!??
Bugscope Team usually they freeze. Sometimes they wake up when their bodies thaw, sometimes they don't. Other times, they will hole up somewhere warm like our homes
- Bugscope Team so we are at 2496x magnification here
- Bugscope Team okay, i'm moving to the brochosomes now, something else very very small!
- Guest Great answer to the gender question!
- Bugscope Team brochosomes are tiny waxy pellets, sometimes round and sometimes oval, that are produced only by leafhoppers
- 1:02pm
- Bugscope Team can't really get any better focus now, working distance is too far for these brochosomes
- Bugscope Team the leafhoppers spread them over their cuticle in what is called an 'anointing behavior'
- Bugscope Team but you can kinda see the cool shape
- Bugscope Team they are nanoparticles -- they are less than a micron in diameter
- Bugscope Team yeah, these brochosomes are about .5 microns, or 500 nanometers each
- Bugscope Team brochosomes are thought, by some people, to help keep eggs -- leafhopper eggs -- from drying out
- Guest The stinger looks cool.
- Bugscope Team so this is on a leafhopper
- Bugscope Team we can take the mag way down to show you
- Bugscope Team brochosomes were first discovered in 1952 when someone looked at insects under an electron microscope!
- Teacher its looks like brains behind the brochosomes. What is it?
Bugscope Team that is the surface of the chitin
- Bugscope Team on a leafhopper we think
- Bugscope Team it looks kind of shriveled and may be on a wing
- Bugscope Team yes it is a leafhopper
- Bugscope Team a leafhopper or planthopper are both true bugs
- Bugscope Team oh wait, someone else is driving now
- Guest great zoom in and out to see perspective!
- Bugscope Team we could see that the brochosomes were on the surface of the elytra, which is the hard shell covering the wings
- Teacher What are some differenes between bugs in the midwest and other regions of the country?
Bugscope Team there is more diversity where it is warmer, and insects live longer in warmer climates
- 1:07pm
- Teacher One of the students is asking if you have a dragonfly?
Bugscope Team not on the stub today, sorry
- Guest The bugs in California are HUGE and they don't last in the freezer very long. The spiders I caught in WI would revive after freezing, The spiders in San Francisco do not.
- Bugscope Team I am sorry I did not answer the 'differences' question well. Some spiders revive easily, as do many ants, and some do not.
- Teacher What is the primary differences between electron microscope and a light microscope?
Bugscope Team a light microscope uses light or photons to image and an electron microscope uses electrons. Since light microscopes use light, their images are in color, but the electron microscopes have better resolution because the electrons are way smaller.
- Bugscope Team But what Dr Korb says is pretty interesting; the insects/arthropods from places where it does not freeze do not have any built-in antifreeze
- Bugscope Team fly face
- Bugscope Team this is a boy, probably, because its eyes are close together
- Bugscope Team these are the antennae
- Bugscope Team they have this component, sort of pillowlike, and also a branchlike component
- Bugscope Team the antennae have lots of chemoreceptors on them
- Teacher Do flies have ears?
Bugscope Team no but they can sense vibration, which is what noise is
- Bugscope Team electron microscopes use electromagnetic lenses, whereas light microscopes use glass lenses
- 1:12pm
- Guest side note: Mr. Stout - you can get all this chat dialogue later and it matches up with the images found during your questions. Be sure to ask them how to get to that. It is a great feature that I just learned!
- Bugscope Team they sense vibration through the setae (the hair things)
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-137/
- Teacher Danna asks if bugs have setae all over their body or just some parts?
Bugscope Team some insects seem to have setae all over, and some in certain places and not others, but they all have setae
- Teacher Do bugs get diseases like we do?
Bugscope Team yes they do get diseases, although fortunately they are not usually the same diseases as humans
- Bugscope Team the setae may be mechanosensory, chemosensory, and/or thermosensory
- Bugscope Team this is a spiracle, a breathing hole on a fly
- Bugscope Team this is a really cool view inside the spiracle, quite rare to see this
- Bugscope Team we see now, however, that the spiracle is charging up with electrons
- 1:17pm
- Teacher Do bugs or insects have bones? Or just exoskeleton?
Bugscope Team no bones at all, they are invertebrates, just the exoskeleton that keeps the guts and stuff inside
- Teacher Is there only one spirracle? Do flies get all their air through this little hole?
Bugscope Team there are often two spiracles per segment, one on each side
- Bugscope Team when the samples are prepared for use in the scanning electron microscope we coat them with gold-palladium to make them conductive, but sometimes the coat does not cover everything
- Bugscope Team here are two mites, hanging out on a beetle
- Bugscope Team a little hideout for mites
- Guest Cool shot!
- Teacher Are mites bad?
Bugscope Team some mites are bad, but others we dont know to much about
- Bugscope Team this is a click beetle, which has this hinged body
- Bugscope Team varroa mites are a big bad mite group found on homey bees
- Bugscope Team if you lie on it, it will click and make you aware of what you're doing, ask you to move, essentially
- 1:22pm
- Teacher What is the difference between a fruit fly and a "regular fly"
Bugscope Team fruit flies usually feed on fungus that occurs in association with fruits; we can feed them things like babyfood in the lab; houseflies like sweet liquids and have sponging mouthparts like fruit flies; horseflies and deerflies have slashing/cutting mouthparts and feed on blood; and there are many other kinds of flies
- Guest nice claw.
- Bugscope Team and this is a beetle claw
- Teacher Zac asks if there is a difference between mites on a bug and mites on a person?
Bugscope Team I don't think this kind of mite is found on people; ours are different. but I have not see the mites that are said to live in one's eyelashes. dustmites are different as well, and they are softbodied, meaning they shrivel like aphids if we do not dry them properly
- 1:28pm
- Bugscope Team these are tenent setae, they help the beetle to stick to surfaces when it walks on them
- Bugscope Team check out the individual facets of the compound eye here, they are called ommatidia
- Teacher Cool eyes?
- Bugscope Team notice the hexagonal shape
- Bugscope Team yep, compound eye
- Teacher nice
- Bugscope Team each hexagon has a lens in it
- Bugscope Team the hexagonal shape helps to allow the surface of the compound eye to be curved
- Bugscope Team if the ommatidia were squares, having a curved surface to the eye would not be so possible
- Bugscope Team ugh I am sorry I am having trouble finding wing speed estimates
- Bugscope Team pretty cool how curved the eye really is
- Guest Awesome perspective "driving"!
- Teacher we were just talking about that. amazing!
- Bugscope Team see the thing in between the eyes? that's the proboscis
- Bugscope Team the proboscis is a type of protrusion from the head/mouth area
- Bugscope Team the furry things on either side of the proboscis, which is rolled up right now, are palps
- Bugscope Team elephants also have a proboscis, but we normally call it a trunk
- Teacher do insects have all five senses like we do?
Bugscope Team no i dont think so. Some insects dont have eyes
- 1:33pm
- Guest Oohhh....great question!
- Bugscope Team i'm not sure why we call it a trunk, because the trunk of a car is in the back of the car, but the trunk of an elephant is in the front
- Bugscope Team when the moth or butterfly wants to extend its proboscis, it fills its internal chamber with hemolymph and forces it to unroll like a party favor
- Bugscope Team get this: insects smell using those setae (hairs)!
- Bugscope Team some of the setae are chemosensory, so they help the insects sense chemicals which can be certain smells
- Bugscope Team ants, especially, do much of their communication using the antennae
- Guest Human chemosensory consists of smell and taste
- Teacher this is not a bug?
- Bugscope Team ah yes, taste too, thanks michelle!
- Bugscope Team nope, this is salt, from wendy's restaurant...
- Bugscope Team salt from wendy's has this cool structure to it, so we sometimes put it on the sample
- Bugscope Team if you take the smell of a dead ant and put it onto a live ant, the worker ants that normally clean the nest will take the live ant away, even if it is clearly struggling and thus alive.
- Teacher more zoom!
Bugscope Team okay!
- Bugscope Team just shows that we can look at a lot of different stuff in the electron microscope, not just bugs
- Guest That ant fact was really interesting....sort of funny in a way!
- 1:38pm
- Bugscope Team lot's of dirt and stuff on this salt, huh?
- Bugscope Team the ants use the chemoreceptors on their antennae to make those 'judgments.'
- Bugscope Team not sure what all this stuff is, so we just call it juju
Bugscope Team probably another sodium salt that prevents clumping
- Bugscope Team normal salt is not this interesting-looking
- Teacher awesome!
- Bugscope Team if we were to look at sugar we would find that it does not form cubes like this
- Teacher very interesting
- Bugscope Team the sodium chloride forms cubes, as you know
- Bugscope Team these are moth scales
- Bugscope Team sugar cubes are sugar crystals artificially stuck together in that shape
- Bugscope Team a moth can shed some of these scales when it gets trapped in a spider web, and escape!
- Bugscope Team let's zoom in on the scales, so you can see that they have holes in them!
- Guest moths are like power rangers and escape artists!
- Bugscope Team those holes keep the weight of the overall scale down, helping it to fly better
- Bugscope Team but still keep the scale solid and tough
- Teacher back to the ants...do they eat the dead ones?
Bugscope Team no I don't think they do, although they will eat almost anything else, including other ant species
- 1:43pm
- Bugscope Team the shapes of the scales make different colors -- different structural colors as opposed to colors that come from pigments
- Bugscope Team they eat recently dead insects, but I'm not sure if that includes their own kind
- Bugscope Team not sure, really. it is a good idea not to eat your own species. and we know, espeically, not the brains.
- Bugscope Team especially (sp.)
- Teacher a couple more questions then we'll let you go...how much food does an insect need to survive? Do they have the insticts of "hungry"?
Bugscope Team you can always say it depends on the insect -- some adult insects do not eat at all. and some feed other of their own species
- Bugscope Team they can starve. Spiders will eat their own webbing for protein if they start going hungry
- Bugscope Team but insects do not seem to get fat like people
- Teacher Does climate effect the speed at which an insect moves?
Bugscope Team well they slow down in colder climates; they grow larger in warmer climates
- Bugscope Team spiders can also eat their own web if they get caught in it
- 1:49pm
- Teacher How big is the biggest insect you have in the lab?
Bugscope Team scott has a prehistoric beetle encased in glass that he stole from a museum... ;) it's big, like 1.5 inches
- Bugscope Team we have a hissing cockroach someone sent us, and some pretty big cicadas, but scott has a really big beetle as well
- Guest Scientists steal things?
- Bugscope Team well, i was kidding
- Guest :)
- Bugscope Team heh no that was a present!
- Bugscope Team he was kidding me about it earlier so i thought i'd get him back
- Bugscope Team our biggest bug is over 6 feet tall and in the 'scope room right now
Bugscope Team ha!!! i wish i had a compound eye
- Bugscope Team we are about out of time, we have researchers that need to use this scope soon
- Guest Great session! I am proud of Mr. Stout! Good job 5th graders!!
- Bugscope Team Thank you for working with us today! This was fun! And it was great to see Dr Korb!
- Bugscope Team great job mr. stout, remember your member page, http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-137, you can view it anytime after your session, it contains all the chat and images from todays session
- Teacher Alright! Thanks so much! This was fantastic!
- Teacher Love ya Dr. Korb!
- Bugscope Team over and out!
- Bugscope Team your member page was also emailed to you when you first applied for bugscope
- Bugscope Team you can also email us with any questions as well: bugscope@beckman.illinois.edu
- Guest Talk to you all later!
- Bugscope Team see you michelle!
- Bugscope Team bye michelle
- Teacher Bye all
- Bugscope Team bye mr. stout
- Guest Bye guys and gal! You were awesome!
- 1:55pm
- Bugscope Team okay, closing the session now, nice job everyone!
- Bugscope Team goodbye mr. stout, great job!
- Bugscope Team don't forget your member page: http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-137
