Connected on 2010-03-01 10:00:00 from Sweetwater, TX, US
- 9:07am
- Bugscope Team pumping down...
- 9:25am
- 9:30am
- 9:37am
- 9:43am
- 9:50am
- Bugscope Team Session is unlocked, ready to roll.
- Bugscope Team Good morning!
- Bugscope Team Where are you from?
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope.
- Guest Just checking out Bugscope...from New Jersey
- Bugscope Team Cool! Our class is not on yet; they should be on in 10 minutes.
- Bugscope Team Let us know if you have any questions.
- Guest Great.
- Bugscope Team The school we are working with today is in Sweetwater, Texas. Where it is likely warmer than it is here or in NJ.
- Guest Definitely!
- Bugscope Team baseball spring training in NJ is nice though, i hear?
- Bugscope Team O.o
- Guest Spring training in lots of mud...it's going to be a slushy spring.
- 9:55am
- Bugscope Team We dropped the mag a bit so you could see where we are.
- 10:00am
- Bugscope Team ^.^ or >.
- Bugscope Team
- Bugscope Team wont let me do the semi colon
- Bugscope Team --.--
- Bugscope Team yes there is also that -.-
- 10:06am
- Bugscope Team hello!!!
- Bugscope Team welcome to bugscope
- Bugscope Team Good Morning!
- Bugscope Team let us know if/when we can help you
- Bugscope Team we were looking at the coiled proboscis of this Monarch butterfly
- Bugscope Team this is the cricket head, and you can see it is holding one of its claws over its face
- Bugscope Team can you see chat ok?
- 10:12am
- Bugscope Team this is the edge of the mandible, which is to the right
- Bugscope Team Please be sure to click on presets when you get to a place that is not so interesting.
- Bugscope Team cool, i talked to carola a bit about how to drive, she is good to go!
- Bugscope Team she's got students now, and another class coming in a bit
- Bugscope Team Cool. Thanks, Alex
- Bugscope Team so please carola, just let us know when you have any questions
- Bugscope Team we will try to chat with you about what you are looking at
- Teacher They are wondering what is this
- Bugscope Team this is a caterpillat
- Bugscope Team caterpillar i mean
- Teacher what part
- Bugscope Team this is one of the 'prolegs' of a caterpillar
- Bugscope Team caterpillars have these prolegs instead of regular legs
- Teacher what is a proleg
- 10:17am
- Bugscope Team scott or cate should answer, they know better than me
- Bugscope Team caterpillars are insects, so they have six legs, but they also have these extra legs that are called prolegs, and they have these cool little hooks on them called crochets
- Bugscope Team nice job controlling the scope, you are doing great!
- Bugscope Team remember, to click again to stop moving, nice
- Bugscope Team nice
- Bugscope Team sorry, pronouced... see-tee
- Bugscope Team setae are sensory, in that they help insects to sense their environment
- Teacher what are they trying to sense
Bugscope Team they can sense all kinds of things with setae, touch, taste, smell....
- Bugscope Team insects have a hard outer shell, called an exoskeleton. that exoskeleton can't feel anything. so those setae stick through the exoskeleton to nerves underneath, that's how they feel things
- Bugscope Team but most setae are fine-tuned towards one sense
- Bugscope Team here is a beetle charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Team that's why is has bright areas
- Bugscope Team like chemosensory setae can sense chemicals, ie smells or tastes
- Bugscope Team they can sense hot and cold, and touch, and wind, and they can sense all different kinds of smells
- Bugscope Team whereas mechanosensory setae can sense movement
- Bugscope Team we mount most of the insects on their backs so we can see their faces, and their mouthparts, as now
- 10:22am
- Teacher how does this guy communicate
- Bugscope Team the sharp things that are folded over each other are the mandibles
- Bugscope Team sometimes they make noises, called stridulating, when they rub their leg against their abdomen or thorax, and they often communicate by releasing chemicals into the air -- pheromones.
- Bugscope Team most insects communicate with their antennae or by making noise, as is the case of the cricket
- Bugscope Team most ants communicate with smells
- Bugscope Team they also move their limbs a certain way -- like a dance -- and they can see each others' colors, to tell if they are the right species
- Bugscope Team many insects have the ability to release scents that are intended to deter ants -- ants will often attack anything
- Bugscope Team those were a couple of the palps, or pedipalps, that are mouthparts
- Bugscope Team and now we see the compound eye of the butterfly that is in the 'scope today
- Bugscope Team these are called ommatidia -- the individual facets of the eye
- Teacher What are the clumps between the other parts
- 10:27am
- Bugscope Team we are not sure! they look like fat little bacteria, sort of
- Bugscope Team they are quite small -- the size of bacillus bacteria
- Teacher How many "eyes" are on 1 eye
Bugscope Team on a moth or butterfly or wasp, for example, there may be 5000 ommatidia that make up one compound eye
- Bugscope Team they may be bacteria that have a film over them
- Bugscope Team the tiny dots we are not sure about -- they seem to indicate another level of complexity. Butterflies and moths can often see ultraviolet wavelengths of light that people do not see.
- Teacher we are changing classes. We
- Teacher We will be a moment
- Bugscope Team no problem see you soon!
- Bugscope Team sure
- Bugscope Team we'll be here
- 10:34am
- Bugscope Team this is one of the tibiae -- the middle portion of the leg -- of the cricket
- Bugscope Team we see things we don't always recognize
- Teacher I can't get any picture now
- Bugscope Team hit refresh
- Bugscope Team try refreshing the browser window
- Bugscope Team F5 is also refresh
- Teacher Much Better. Thanks
- Bugscope Team cool
- Bugscope Team this is so creepy-looking
- Bugscope Team the little hairs -- the setae -- help the caterpillar sense where it is placing its prolegs
- Teacher How much does this microscope magnify
Bugscope Team we can take the magnification up over 600,000x, but there is not much to see. sometimes we take images at 200,000x. But that is infrequent.
- Bugscope Team when we look at caterpillars like this it is sometimes important to realize that they have shrunken a bit since they died
- Bugscope Team when looking at insects we don't usually go above 30,000x but we have gone up to 100,000x when looking at insects in the past. There just isn't that much interesting detail at that high
- 10:39am
- Bugscope Team all the images are black and white. that's because this is an electron microscope. it uses electrons to gather the image, not light
- Bugscope Team we are now about 2 to 3 times what you can see using a light microscope
- Bugscope Team with a regular light microscope, you see color because color is a property of the frequency of light. since we aren't using light in an electron microscope, no color
- Bugscope Team you are getting very good at driving!
- Bugscope Team however, with an electron microscope, you can get WAY higher magnification than with a light scope. sometimes we can gett 600,00x mag on this scope
- Bugscope Team when you focus it is either up or down -- it gets worse or it gets better
- Bugscope Team nice job focusing!
- Bugscope Team this is a close-up of a compound eye
- Bugscope Team the micron bar in the lower left corner of the viewing screen also gives you an idea of the magnification you are working at.
- Teacher What is a micron
Bugscope Team a micron is one millionth of a meter, ie there are one million microns in a meter. it's really really small!
- Bugscope Team compound eyes are really cool. they are made up of individual bumps called ommatidia, each one has a lens in it
- Bugscope Team the rod-shaped bacteria -- the bacilli -- are often about 2 microns long
- Bugscope Team a micron is also a micrometer, and it is one one-thousandth of a millimeter
- Bugscope Team so right now we are looking at 3 microns, that's 3 millionths of a meter!
- Bugscope Team heh, now one micron!!!
- Bugscope Team the little dot-like features of the eye are in the nanometer scale
- Bugscope Team i'm not sure what those dots are though. compound eyes sometimes have those dots. those are really small
- 10:44am
- Bugscope Team there are one thousand nanometers in one mcron
- Teacher wow that's small
- Bugscope Team those dots are about 150 nanometers in diameter
- Bugscope Team looks like those dots are one hundred nanometers in size, or there abouts
- Bugscope Team cool! this is the beetle
- Bugscope Team it has very sharp mandibles
- Bugscope Team his head is kinda tilted to our right
- Bugscope Team see the compound eyes on either side of the head, which is tilted?
- Bugscope Team yeah with all those mouthparts. It looks as if there is an insect in its mouth
- Bugscope Team the antenna are sticking out to the right
- Bugscope Team the antennae are like rabbit ears
- Teacher Do you know what kind of beatle this is?
- Teacher Beetle
- Bugscope Team Insects often have tiny accessory feelers called palps, or pedipalps, that help them taste and manipulate their food
- Bugscope Team we don't know just what it is, and we will have to take it to the entomologists, none of whom are logged in today
- Bugscope Team it looks like a bark beetle of some sort
- Bugscope Team it resembles a lightning bug, but it is not one of those
- Teacher Do they have tongues
- Bugscope Team insect mouths are sideways compared to ours
- Bugscope Team sometimes they have tongues -- the Monarch does
- Bugscope Team but this beetle does not have a tongue
- 10:49am
- Bugscope Team a bee tongue is called a 'glossa'
- Bugscope Team mouths are so complicated...
- Bugscope Team yay! this is the caterpillar!
- Bugscope Team see the little bumps on the sides of the head? those are tiny eyes, called 'stemmata'
- Bugscope Team you can see its mandibles too --
- Bugscope Team the mandibles are forked
- Teacher can they really see
Bugscope Team it is likely they do not see well at all -- just shapes and shadows
- Bugscope Team caterpillars are often able to produce silk -- like spiders -- but it comes from around the mouth, as in this caterpillar
- Teacher Do they sense smell
- 10:55am
- Bugscope Team we think that some of the little knobby setae we see now are chemosensory -- like tastebuds. and that is how they smell/tatste their food
- Bugscope Team we are looking right at the forked mandible now
- Bugscope Team the mandibles open side to side, like a gate
- Teacher where exactly
Bugscope Team see the ball looking thing in the lower right, those setae on it, those are chemosensory setae, i think
- Bugscope Team insects don't have noses like we do, instead they smell with chemosensory setae
- Bugscope Team the mandible is folded over another mandible
- Bugscope Team this part, that looks like an upside-down heart, is called the clypeus
- Bugscope Team it moves, as well, when the caterpillar chews
- Teacher and it does what
Bugscope Team well, madibles in general are there to help push food into the direction of the insects mouth, like if we had little hands on the sides of our mouths that could scoop food into it...
- Bugscope Team we think it helps hold and direct the food into the mouth
- Bugscope Team some of those little turrets may be spinnerets that produce silk, or web
- Bugscope Team but our normal hands are good enough at doing that, so we don't need mandibles.... :)
- Bugscope Team now we see the Monarch butterfly head
- 11:00am
- Bugscope Team in the middle, coiled up because it is not being used, is the proboscis -- the 'tongue'
- Teacher what are the 2 holes above the tongue
- Bugscope Team the long thing sticking out of its face, that's the proboscis
- Bugscope Team hmm, what are those holes? i don't know. maybe spiracles? but normally spiracles are on the abdomen
- Teacher What does the proboscis do
Bugscope Team it's used for drinking liquids, like nectar
- Bugscope Team butterflies live on a liquid diet
- Bugscope Team the butterfly pushes hemolymph into the inside cavities of the proboscis in order to get it to extend
- Bugscope Team it is like blowing up one of those New Years' Eve party favors, and it rolls back up when the butterfly leaves the flower it is taking nectar from
- Bugscope Team other animals on this planet have a proboscis as well. the largest proboscis in the world is the elephant trunk.
- Bugscope Team this is the edge of the proboscis, and in the background we see a lot of scales -- butterflies, moths, skippers, mosquitos, and silverfish are covered with scales
- 11:05am
- Bugscope Team salt!
- Bugscope Team this is salt from wendys fast food chain
- Bugscope Team see how the salt forms cubic crystals?
- Bugscope Team sugar does not form crystals this shape
- Bugscope Team salt from Wendy's is really neat-looking because it has those intricate shapes
- Bugscope Team this may be another chemical that is safely added to the salt to help keep it from clumping
- Bugscope Team here are some of the butterfly scales
- Bugscope Team carola, remember, all the chat and images from this session are being saved to your member page: http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-001
- Bugscope Team and you can see a pore where one of the scales is missing
- Teacher the scales fit into the pores?
Bugscope Team yes they do!
- Bugscope Team when you rub a butterfly's wings and they feel slick, that is the scales
- Teacher what is the powder that comes off when you handle a butterfly?
Bugscope Team that powder is scales!
- Bugscope Team these are very small, and they make the wings feel velvety
- 11:10am
- Bugscope Team if you were a butterfly, and you flew into a spider's web, you might be able to slip out and leave scales stuck to the web
- Bugscope Team but also, spiders do not like the taste of Monarchs, and they will cut them out of their webs
- Bugscope Team the shapes we see now are very small and regular, and they form what are called 'structural colors'
- Bugscope Team they taste bad because monarchs eat from milkweed plants and those plants are poisonous to a lot of insects/animals
- Bugscope Team now we see the cricket head
- Bugscope Team the mouth is to the south
- Bugscope Team the mouth is so complicated
- Bugscope Team that tube is one of the palps that the cricket uses to taste the air, and taste smells coming off of its food
- Bugscope Team the eye is the dome on the bottom, and you can see another one on the top
- 11:15am
- Bugscope Team in the top right corner is the left eye
- Bugscope Team one of the claws!
- Teacher We are going quickly. The class is about over.
- Teacher What is the opening under the claw
Bugscope Team it's probably not really an opening, but where some softer cuticle deflated a little after the insect dried out
- Bugscope Team all of these 'extra' images will be saved to your member page, and you can look at them later as well
- Bugscope Team that is where the 'unguitractor' is -- it is like a long tendon that opens and closes the claw
- Bugscope Team you can see some flattened fungal hyphae there
- Bugscope Team wow good job focussing
- Bugscope Team are you sure you haven't done this before? ;)
- Teacher Thanks so much for everything. Class just ended. We are going to have to do this again sometime. Hopefully I will know how to do this better.
- Bugscope Team you are welcome to come back. Thank You!
- Bugscope Team you did well especially for your first time
- 11:20am
- Teacher I guess I just log on and get to view these images again?
Bugscope Team yes go to your member page and you can click to view the transcript from today and all the chat and the images viewed will be there
- Bugscope Team You can have your students log in if you have a computer lab that will let you do that. and the students can ask questions.
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-001/
- Teacher I just won't be able to manipulate the scope?
Bugscope Team when you work with us again you will be able to drive, and we can also, with your permission, let students drive, one at a time
- Bugscope Team log onto the url below
- Teacher Thanks so much for your time. The students loved it and were amazed at how close the scope got.
- Bugscope Team Cool. Thank You!
- Bugscope Team See you next year!
- Bugscope Team over and out...
- Teacher Thanks. 4th period said love ya'll!
