Connected on 2010-04-14 17:00:00 from Milwaukee, WI, US
- 4:24pm
- Bugscope Team jeff! welcome!
- Bugscope Team we are setting up presets for your session
- Bugscope Team Jeff! Yay!
- Teacher I am in. Thank you Scott, jeff
- Bugscope Team so Dude we are setting up presets for your session.
- Bugscope Team nothing will work quite yet, for you, but you for sure can chat with us
- Bugscope Team once we get the presets made we can let you have control of the microscope
- Teacher Scott, Will it be permissible for the students to login on their computers as well? Jeff
Bugscope Team totally. we prefer that actually
- Bugscope Team absolutely!
- Bugscope Team we've got the session locked now. once we are done with presets, we'll unlock it and then you'll see microscope controls on the right
- Bugscope Team they will go to the same place and log in as Students rather than Teacher
- Bugscope Team just have the students goto: http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/live, and login as a student, no password
- Teacher Great thank you .
- Bugscope Team the students will not need to use a password
- Bugscope Team you're welcome jeff
- 4:32pm
- Bugscope Team Jeff you can start to see what's going on now.
- Bugscope Team We are making preset positions for you to choose from once the session gets started.
- Teacher Just a questions, How do I know what I am looking at. Will a presentation be given to start.
Bugscope Team also, try clicking on the scale bar in the lower left of the image, you'll see a lot of information about what you are looking at
- Bugscope Team You can click on a preset, or you can drive the microscope freehand.
- Bugscope Team You can give a presentation and let your students know what's going on -- tell them what Bugscope is.
- Bugscope Team It is fairly intuitive.
- Bugscope Team this is a resource the teachers will be able to use in order to introduce their students to microscopy, or to insects, or to science..
- 4:37pm
- Bugscope Team scott's right, the students will start asking questions themselves, sometimes it gets pretty busy
- Teacher This is the best use of technology I have seen yet. I thought regular microscopes were fantastic. Wow.
Bugscope Team thanks!
- Teacher How many presets will there be?
Bugscope Team we normally do 15-20 presets a session
- 4:43pm
- Bugscope Team you will have control over the microscope once we unlock the session -- once we're done with the presets
- Bugscope Team your students may log in anytime, and they will be able to ask us what's going on -- so you can sort of hang back if you want once you've given them a brief intro
- Bugscope Team we can confer control of the microscope to anyone else, like a student
- Bugscope Team only one at a time, of course
- Bugscope Team it wouldn't be so good to have many people trying to drive at one time
- Bugscope Team this is a $600,000 scanning electron microscope, and we have been running Bugscope with it since March 1999
- Bugscope Team so we have done around 500 sessions
- Bugscope Team this is salt from a Wendy's restaurant
- Bugscope Team what is going on right now is Chas is driving the microscope, finding cool stuff, and Alex is running the computer with the Bugscope server hooked up to it, inputting the presets as Chas locates ones he likes....
- 4:48pm
- 4:54pm
- 5:02pm
- Bugscope Team okay, i just unlocked the session, you should see controls on the right side of the image
- 5:11pm
- Bugscope Team Jeff!
- Bugscope Team Dude!
- Bugscope Team You may start driving now if you wish.
- 5:16pm
- Bugscope Team jeff, when you get back, we are ready anytime
- Bugscope Team was that you? cool!
- Bugscope Team any questions at all just let us know
- Bugscope Team things
- Bugscope Team good work jeff! click once to start moving, then click again to stop. right on dude!
- Teacher If I can control this a two year old can.
- Bugscope Team Jeff! How are you doing? Try taking the mag down.
- Bugscope Team You'll see where you are.
- Bugscope Team and try clicking on the scale bar in the lower left, that'll bring up a cool info key
- 5:22pm
- Bugscope Team this is a true bug -- Hemiptera
- Bugscope Team you can see one of the compound eyes
- Bugscope Team lower left
- Bugscope Team oh hello Chas 2
- Bugscope Team the sequel
- Teacher My students are arriving and beginning to set up and get in.
- Bugscope Team Cool!
- Bugscope Team They should be able to go to bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu and log in as Students
- 5:28pm
- Bugscope Team hi kellie, welcome to bugscope!
- Bugscope Team hi megan1
- Bugscope Team Hi Kellie, and Megan1!
- Guest hi!
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Guest hows life
- Bugscope Team good good, you?
- Bugscope Team we are making noise down here
- Guest where are you guys? we're in a classroom
- Bugscope Team Pretty relaxed here; got some music on for the after-hours session
- Bugscope Team Basement. You win
- Guest have no idea what this is.
- Bugscope Team we are 23 feet underground in the middle of serious nowhere
- Bugscope Team we are in illinois, in the basement of the beckman institute
- Bugscope Team this is the edge of an eye of a spider
- Guest im from chi town
- Bugscope Team corn belt USA
- Bugscope Team go bulls!
- Bugscope Team We're looking at some hairs, called "setae", around the rim of a spider's eye
- Bugscope Team da bears
- Bugscope Team should we give you control, Megan?
- Guest MN!!!!!
- Guest blackhawks
- Bugscope Team welcome annamarie, mristen, akr, welcome
- Bugscope Team Jeff is driving now...
- Guest seriously, what is this site
- Guest my teacher told us to log on ...were in college
- Bugscope Team great, this is bugscope, where students can control an electron microscope over the internet
- Bugscope Team You're logged into a website that gives you interactive control over a half-million dollar electron microscope
- Guest oh wow.
- Bugscope Team So only one person can control at a time and currently Jeff's got control
- Guest annamarie, join this convo
- Guest Jeff is my teacher?
Bugscope Team um yeah
- Bugscope Team This is something we do with about three class-rooms a week, at schools all over the world
- Guest yes, i think jeff is our teacher.
- Guest considering we're in the same class haha
- Bugscope Team heh
- Guest so what are we looking at
- Guest hair follicles
Bugscope Team pretty much. these are little hairs- called setae
- Bugscope Team okay Megan we are giving you control.
- Bugscope Team These are some hairs, "setae" in insect parlance, around a spider eye
- Guest i have control what does that mean
- Bugscope Team you should see controls to the right of the images
- Bugscope Team This is an education outreach activity we run free of charge with schools that apply.
- 5:33pm
- Bugscope Team and you can also click on one of the presets if you want the microscope to drive to that place
- Bugscope Team like that...
- Guest megan is sucking at this so far
Bugscope Team heh
- Bugscope Team if you want to change the mag to see where you, for example, click the mag button lower
- Guest oh wait, thats cool
- Bugscope Team This part is super-cool, we've never seen anything like this before
- Bugscope Team this is pretty cool, yeha
- Guest how do we know what it is?
Bugscope Team you would ask us, and we should also have named it since it is a preset
- Bugscope Team Well, that's sort of a boot-camp introductio into science: we don't always know what we're looking at ;)
- Guest give control to jeff
- Bugscope Team okay Jefff is the supreme ruler
- Bugscope Team He's got it
- Bugscope Team I mean Jefffff
- Guest (he got mad)
- Bugscope Team this is the tip of the proboscis of the moth
- Teacher Scot can you tell they are like little children again.
Bugscope Team heh, yeah
- Bugscope Team These are mystery structures on the under-side of the coiled-up proboscis
- Guest Hi Jasssssminnnnn
- Bugscope Team And this is a totally different looking proboscis on a mosquito
- Bugscope Team okay this is the outside of the proboscis of the skeeter
- Bugscope Team mosquitos are covered in scales, as are butterflies and moths
- Bugscope Team you can see several of them here
- Bugscope Team take the mag down, Dude
- Bugscope Team so you have some, like, perspective
- Bugscope Team Emily, Kaitlyn, Liz, Nick, Casey, Jazz feel free to ask questions if you want
- Bugscope Team and Melissa, and Amy
- 5:38pm
- Bugscope Team Scales frequently have the finest micro-structure of any insect body parts, sometimes showing features on the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter
- Bugscope Team let us know if you are having trouble drivin', Jeff
- Guest What are the long flagella like things?
Bugscope Team those are scales!
Bugscope Team the things that are kind of like leaves are scales
Bugscope Team Those are just a variety of setae ("hairs"). There are often several different types all in one area. Some are mechano-sensory (they feel touch), some chemosensory (chemical sensing/taste/smell)
- Bugscope Team like, nothing has changed for awhile
- Guest Oh!
- Guest How long are the scales?
Bugscope Team You can see the scale-bar in the lower-left corner of the image is showing about 10 microns, which is equivalent to about one-fifth the width of a human hair
- Bugscope Team Mosquitoes, silverfish, moths, butterflies, and very few beetles and weevils have scales
- Bugscope Team okay I am driving if you are not....
- Guest he is teaching
Bugscope Team really
- Guest so the long ones are scales...what are the short hair-like structures used for?
Bugscope Team the short ones are often chemoreceptors
Bugscope Team The oar-shaped ones are the scales.
- Bugscope Team okay cool, AnnaMarie I gave you control
- Teacher I am talking to the class.
- Guest Is the whole Mosquito covered in scales?
Bugscope Team Yes, most of their body has scales. The only part I can think of that doesn't, offhand, are the eyes
- Guest oh cool! thanks!
- Bugscope Team okay think about it like this. if you had a classroom full of kids and had the opportunity to drive a $600,000 scanning electron microscope, would now be a good time to do a lecture?
- Guest haha
- Guest Nope
- Guest sure why not
- Guest the controls have been taken away from jeff
Bugscope Team AnnaMarie has them
- 5:44pm
- Guest give them to emily!
- Bugscope Team Emily has control.
- Bugscope Team Sorry, scott had just given them to annamarie so she could continue driving
- Bugscope Team Actually Jeff if you want to drive let us know.
- Guest i am very bad at it but emily will be better
- Bugscope Team nice
- Bugscope Team Emily you can choose from any of the presets as well.
- Guest Are some of the scales falling off?
Bugscope Team Yep, the moth scales had be released, which comes in handle when you get stuck in a spider web: release some scales and fly away, to fly in a web another day...
- Guest do mosquitos bite or sting?
- Bugscope Team As scott was saying, all of the chat and images are archived in a transcript format on our website automatically, so when you're planning a Bugscope lesson you can focus on driving around as much as possible during your hour, then review the chat and images as an activity afterwords
- Bugscope Team Here's another thing to think about: suppose you were wearing a suit of armor all of the time. How would you feel things that were touching you -- touching the suit of armor?
- Guest Do you mean that the scales are like a suit of armor?
Bugscope Team well, i think he meant that the exoskeleton is like a suit of armour. the exoskeleton can't feel anything, it has no nerves in it
- Bugscope Team If you had long sensory hairs projecting through that armor you could feel what you were next to, and if they were thermosensory you could sense heat, and if they were chemosensory you would smell with them
- Guest yea they are, that's why they need the chemoreceptors, right?
- Guest michael would like the controls now :)
- Guest jk, give to casey
- Bugscope Team insects have an exoskeleton, as Alex said -- they have their skeleton on the outside
- Bugscope Team so many of the hairs we see, which we call 'setae,' are sensory
- Bugscope Team Cool!
- Guest nice
- 5:49pm
- Bugscope Team this is a large beetle
- Guest he looks mean!
- Bugscope Team the head
- Guest is this still a mosquito?
Bugscope Team this is a beetle
- Bugscope Team cool face
- Guest no jazzzzzzzzzzzz
- Bugscope Team this is the head, and you can see the proximal parts of the antennae, the jaws, and the palps, as well as the eyes
- Bugscope Team two large compound eyes on the top/side of the head, antennas next to the eyes, and mandibles beside the mouth
- Guest does this guy have a brain?
Bugscope Team yes!
- Bugscope Team it takes a little while to get driving down. Jeff is a natural.
- Bugscope Team you can see the curve of the compound eye
- Guest ?
- Bugscope Team the ommatidia on the compound eye are streamlined into the surface
- Guest claw?
Bugscope Team Yep
- Bugscope Team yep
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes you would likely have better peripheral vision, and you would also have the ability to sense motion -- changes in the visual field -- very quickly. good if you are a bug
- Bugscope Team this is a true bug -- Hemiptera
- Bugscope Team not all insects are bugs, but all bugs are insects
- Bugscope Team the lens's in the compound eye are fixed, they can't move around like our lens's can. so they have hundreds of fixed lens's pointed in a curved area, that gives them peripheral views
- Bugscope Team when we do Bugscope sessions we often have entomologists on board to help
- Bugscope Team like, real entomologists
- Guest ?
- Bugscope Team Hemiptera all have piercing/sucking mouthparts, and their elytra are a little different from beetles, for example
- 5:54pm
- Bugscope Team a true bug is a hemipteran
- Guest Send the controls to Jazz
- Bugscope Team Jaws has control now.
- Bugscope Team click again to stop jazz
- Bugscope Team true bugs have a proboscis they use to stab into insects are plants
Bugscope Team that's how you can usually tell if an insect is a true bug
- Guest ok so whats a hemipteran?
Bugscope Team Hemiptera are the so-called true bugs
- Bugscope Team jazz, click on the image again, that'll stop it moving
- Bugscope Team Sorry guys -- temporary technical difficulty here; we're stuck moving along
- Bugscope Team hemi ptera means 'half wing,' and is intended to describe how their wings are connected, or not, to the elytra, which is the hard shell on the back
- Guest is an ant a true bug?
Bugscope Team no- true bugs look more like a beetle with a tube for a mouthpart
- Bugscope Team okay, we are fixing
- Bugscope Team OK, we should be back in action. Jumping back to a preset now
- Bugscope Team okay, it should be fixed
- Bugscope Team jazz has control again
- Bugscope Team make sure, when using click to drive, click once to start moving, then click again to stop.
- Bugscope Team but you guys are doing great, keep it up
- Bugscope Team Occassionally the click-to-drive gets stuck during the movement part
- Guest What is this a picture of?
- Teacher What is this a picture of
- Bugscope Team You're seeing the facets of a compound eye
- Bugscope Team called ommatidia
- Bugscope Team ants are hymenoptera like bees and wasps
- 5:59pm
- Guest abt how many facets are there on a beetle eye?
Bugscope Team It depends on what kind of beetle, but I'll put out a ballpark of tens to hundreds
Bugscope Team The number of facets in a compound eye, through my experience, is closely correlated with how dependent they are on their vision. Flying insects have much higher density ommatidia than ants which live underground in the dark
- Guest and i can't click anything....it says, plz wait on the screen, Looks different from everyone elses screen too
Bugscope Team sorry, hit reload (F5) and it should get you reset
- Guest If a part of the compound eye is injured and unable to function do the other parts continue to work?
Bugscope Team yes they are sort of redundant that way
- Bugscope Team some true bugs use their piercing mouthparts to suck up plant juices, and some use them to pierce other insects
- Bugscope Team jazz, can you refresh your browser, F5, then try again
- Bugscope Team collateral damage from the issue a moment ago
- Bugscope Team click again to stop moving
- Guest ok sooo its not working. maybe its my computer...switch controls to someone else
- Guest plz?
- Bugscope Team note that you are not actually seeing 'pictures' -- you are seeing live images on the scanning electron microscope
- Bugscope Team Jazz, if you click in the image again it will stop driving.
- Bugscope Team Carly has control now.
- Guest thanks!
- Guest GO BLONDIE GO!
- Bugscope Team Ok, Scott's taken us to a preset here, Go ahead and navigate where-ever you like!
- Bugscope Team and I just took the 'scope to a place to start from
- Bugscope Team this is one of the legs of the grasshopper
- Bugscope Team Here you're seeing the forearm and of a cricket reaching up into the air
- Bugscope Team you can see the claws, and you can see that the tarsi further down are modified to form something like the sole of a shoe.
- Guest do grasshoppers have compound eyes as well?
Bugscope Team yes they do
- Bugscope Team the ommatidia are kind of flat on a grasshopper compound eye
- 6:04pm
- Guest What is the average lifespan of a grasshopper?
Bugscope Team grasshoppers live as fertilized eggs for maybe 10 months. they are adults for about 30 days, and before that they are nymphs for awhile -- 20 to 50 days is what I read. so about a year
- Bugscope Team but the individual facets of the eye, like in praying mantises and some other insects, are streamlined into the shape of the eye -- they're hard to make out
- Teacher Scott can I please have control again. All others seem to be freezing up.
Bugscope Team you have control
- Bugscope Team whereas on a fly compound eye, the ommatidia are very curved in shape, with a hexagonal perimeter
- Bugscope Team jeff, you've got control
- Teacher Can I get presets.
- Bugscope Team This is an odd structure near where the thorax and abdomen join on a small fly
- Bugscope Team sure, go ahead and click on a preset, it should take you there
- Teacher I want to start at 1 and go to 14
- Bugscope Team This is preset 1
- Bugscope Team This is the head of the stink bug, as viewed from below
- Bugscope Team We can zoom out here and see this in context
- Bugscope Team these are odd setae
- Guest what;'s a stink bug? I've never heard of that before. does it perhaps go by some other name as well?
Bugscope Team they are also called shield bugs i think
- Bugscope Team and here's the grasshopper claw
- Bugscope Team cool, this is a palp
- Bugscope Team stink bugs are also Hemiptera. they are usually plant pests, I think. if you bother them they will squeeze out a drop or two of foul-smelling liquid that makes you want to leave them alone
- 6:09pm
- Bugscope Team This is a cool one!
- Bugscope Team they are shield shaped
- Bugscope Team Spikey
- Bugscope Team And this is an isopod leg
- Bugscope Team yeah, these are some kind of microsetae i think.
- Bugscope Team some people use 'shield bugs' and 'stink bugs' as synonyms, but I am not sure that is correct
- Bugscope Team now this is wendy's salt. we think they add some compound to it that gives it an odd structre
- Bugscope Team structure
- Bugscope Team these are odd things on the fly abdomen, i'm not sure what they are
- Bugscope Team ah, this is a proboscis
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- Bugscope Team a moth proboscis
- Bugscope Team elephants also have a proboscis, their trunks. that is the largest proboscis in the world
- Bugscope Team Looks like soft-serve icecream
- Bugscope Team moths and butterflies with coiled probosces like these fill them with hemolymph to get them to extend out
- 6:14pm
- Bugscope Team Was interesting to see the charging effect there
- Bugscope Team we are beaming electrons at these samples in a vacuum chamber, and the samples are coated with gold-palladium to make them conductive
- Bugscope Team If you zoom out you can see the ball and socket style join for the leg there
- Bugscope Team but insects, in particular, are hard to make completely conductive because they have so many fine features that do not conduct electrons down the bodyny fine fea
- Guest looks like it wants to hug
Bugscope Team heh, yeah, roly poly's are cool
Bugscope Team I nominate you
- Guest THANK YOU!
- 6:19pm
- Guest thanks
- Guest thank you!
- Guest Thank you!!
- Bugscope Team thanks for logging in today!!
- Guest Thank you!!
- Guest thanks for showing us this cool stuff!
- Bugscope Team You're welcome guys! Hope to see you back on again
- Guest Thanks!
- Guest thank youuu
- Guest thank you! ^_^
- Guest thank you so much! :)
- Bugscope Team Thank you for connecting with us today.
- Guest thanks, this was really cool
- Guest thanks, this was great
- Bugscope Team jeff, make sure to check your member page after the session, http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-008, it saves all the chat and images from this session
- Bugscope Team We have done this for 11 years now, somewhere around 500 sessions.
- Bugscope Team you all did great work
- Bugscope Team it was fun having you in bugscope
- Bugscope Team Jeff you did a good job.
- Teacher Thank you very much I will email you tomorrow. Once again thank you.
- Bugscope Team thanks jeff
- Bugscope Team later!
- 6:25pm
- Bugscope Team good bye students
