Connected on 2010-03-10 10:00:00 from Odessa, TX, US
- 9:50am
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team hello Elms!
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Teacher welcome, we are here with a fifth grade class
- Bugscope Team You have control of the microscope. Please let us know if you have any trouble driving, and please let us know when you have questions about anything!
- Teacher what insect and part are we focused on
Bugscope Team this is the claw of an earwig
- Bugscope Team we have some of your insects along with some of ours today
- Teacher how do I move it
- Bugscope Team it has a mite on it
- Bugscope Team you should see controls to the right of the image
- Bugscope Team the session was locked, I just unlocked it
- Bugscope Team you can change the mag, select click to center to enable you to use the mouse on the screen and click off center - whereupon the image will recenter
- Bugscope Team if you use click to drive, remember to click to stop
- Bugscope Team and you can click on any of the presets to have the microscope drive to that saved location
- Bugscope Team the presets are the thumbnail-sized images to the right of the chat box
- Bugscope Team presets are places we have chosen beforehand that you will be taken to and can then drive around
- 9:55am
- Bugscope Team right now we are seeing carbon double-stick tape that the insects/arthropods are all mounted upon
- Teacher having trouble navigating could you select the part
- Bugscope Team so I just clicked on preset #13 -- the flea head
- Bugscope Team if you get lost, it could help to single click on a preset in the lower right, and the microscope will navigate you there
- Bugscope Team you can see the eyespot -- the eye
- Bugscope Team now we are back on the earwig claw
- Bugscope Team you can scroll through the presets
- Teacher where is the mite
Bugscope Team the mite is found on another leg, you could try driving to the left and taking down the mag to find it, or you could clickon preset 11 to go right there
- Bugscope Team sometimes it is better to click F11 to expand your screen to the full size
- Bugscope Team the mite is preset 11
- Bugscope Team there it is!
- Bugscope Team can you scroll down to see other presets? sometimes it is hard to see them depending on what you are using to control the 'scope
- 10:00am
- Bugscope Team to us it looks like you are clicking on the same preset each time, and it keeps going to that
- Bugscope Team I just clicked on preset 5
- Teacher I just found the scroll the area, thanks
- Bugscope Team totally cool
- Bugscope Team this is not easy to do first time, we know!
- Teacher Is this the beetle?
Bugscope Team yes this is the beetle!
- Bugscope Team see the large compound eyes on either side of the mouthparts?
- Bugscope Team yay! The beetle!
- Teacher I found this boring in a mesquite,
Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team now we see its mouth, and we see its palps, which are like arms that belong to the mouth, and we see the antennae, and we see the eyes on either side of the head
- Bugscope Team these are little pores that we find above each set of legs
- Teacher what is the spiracle
- 10:05am
- Bugscope Team a spiracle is what insects use to breathe through, and although this is not an insect, it is a similar structure
- Bugscope Team this is the millipede's head, tucked into a ball with its body
- Bugscope Team the legs are all the same shape, and they have a single claw, sort of like a sharp toenail
- Bugscope Team two different shapes of moth scales!
- Bugscope Team some are jagged and some have a rounded top edge
- Bugscope Team you can see that the moth is covered with scales, even down its arms
- Bugscope Team these are ommatidia -- the individual facets of the eye
- Bugscope Team and this is salt from a Wendy's restaurant
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down here you can see where you are
- 10:10am
- Bugscope Team the tongue of the wasp!
- Bugscope Team claw!
- Bugscope Team hamuli!
- Bugscope Team do you want to know what they do?
- Bugscope Team now if you take the mag down you can see where this is
- Teacher I just changed classes, now 4th grade will be comming in
- Bugscope Team this is very good -- we rarely get such a good view of the tongue
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Teacher I am taking some time to learn to navigate, my students really enjoyed the 'tour'
- 10:15am
- Bugscope Team great!
- Bugscope Team we often make presets so that the students will be curious about the context -- about where they are
- Bugscope Team see how the compound eyes are very round and streamlined into the shape of the head?
- 10:20am
- Bugscope Team look at all of the pollen!
- Teacher what are the small bumps
Bugscope Team each one of those are a ball of pollen
- Bugscope Team those are pollen grains!
- Teacher what are the pointed things
- Bugscope Team theses are the parts of the antenna that help the wasp taste the air
- Teacher stundents say ewwwwwwww
- Bugscope Team the pointed things are setae that likely give the wasp information about how the wind is moving
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down you can see sort of where you are
- Bugscope Team this is cool too!
- Bugscope Team these are a very few of the eye facets of the moth
- Bugscope Team they look like almost perfect hexagons
- Bugscope Team the moth may have thousands of ommatidia in each compound eye
- Bugscope Team this is a claw, and in the center is a part called an 'arolium'
- Bugscope Team we like to get kids grosses out doing this. Makes the whole experience that much more fun
- Bugscope Team the ariolium can swell and shrink and help the moth grasp or cling to a surface
- 10:26am
- Teacher well, we are from Texas and it is hard to gross us out
Bugscope Team yeah I bet. You have a much more diverse collection of insects there then here for sure
- Teacher our students think its cool
- Teacher we live in a semi desert area, our insects have wonderful adaptations
- Bugscope Team that is pretty cool
- Bugscope Team here
- Bugscope Team here's the mite
- Bugscope Team mites like this often live on earwigs
- Teacher is it a parasite or is it a sybiotic relationship
- 10:31am
- Bugscope Team we are not sure; these are not well studied
- Bugscope Team we find the (apparently) same mites on other insects, sometimes
- Teacher I have a hissing cockroach that has a mite that lives with it , are they similar
- Bugscope Team could be!
- Bugscope Team we have seen these mites on large millipedes, and we think they come from the soil
- Bugscope Team the flea!
- Teacher is the circlular part an eye
Bugscope Team yes!
- Bugscope Team it has cutting mouthparts that would be to the left just out of where we are focused now
- Teacher what is the fiberous stuff
Bugscope Team it was stuck to the insect. I think it might be lint of some sort
- Bugscope Team yes it looks like plant fibers to us
- Teacher is this what they are protecting when they coil up in a circle
- 10:37am
- Bugscope Team this is something we have found recently, and we are not really sure whether it is a spiracle or a venom duct, or just what it is
- Bugscope Team when they curl up, their backs are probably tougher than the rest of them. It protects their heads and limbs
- Bugscope Team see the mandibles here, in the middle on top?
- Bugscope Team insect mouthparts are quite different from ours in several ways
- Bugscope Team one is that their mouths open from side to side
- Bugscope Team and they have accessory limbs that help them eat and taste their food
- Teacher the beetle head isnt coming up
- Bugscope Team those accessory limbs are called 'palps' or sometimes 'pedipalps'
- Bugscope Team hit refresh on your browser
- Bugscope Team try refreshing your screen
- Bugscope Team your browser window that is
- Bugscope Team do you see it now?
- Teacher thanks it is up now
- Bugscope Team the little bumpy things on the side of the head are the compound eyes
- 10:42am
- Bugscope Team and there are four palps, as well as the two antennae on the left and right
- Bugscope Team this is the lower portion of the mouth
- Bugscope Team the claw!
- Bugscope Team the setae we see -- the little bristles or hairs -- are often mechanosensory. they help the insect sense its surroundings through the cuticle, which is what the exoskeleton is called
- Bugscope Team if you had an exoskeleton it would be like wearing a suit of armor all of the time
- Teacher what part is this
Bugscope Team this is part of the mosquito eye. They are normally more plump then this. When insects die, they dry out a bit, creating a sunken look with their eyes sometimes
- 10:47am
- Bugscope Team the ommatidia are littered with scales
- Bugscope Team mosquitos, silverfish, and moths and butterflies have scales, as well as very few beetles
- Bugscope Team looks like we are off the stage
- Bugscope Team everything we are looking at is in a vacuum chamber
- Bugscope Team and all of the critters on the stub are coated with a few nanometers of gold-palladium alloy to make them conductive
- Bugscope Team the last four or five segments of the limb are called the 'tarsi.'
- Teacher our time is up. this has been great, thanks for the time
- 10:53am
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2009-140/
- Bugscope Team thank you very much for trying out bugscope today. We hope you sign up again in the future
- Bugscope Team below is your member page, which has the images and a chat transcrip
