Connected on 2010-11-12 11:00:00 from Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ, US
- 9:46am
- Bugscope Team sample is pumping down
- 10:05am
- Bugscope Team hi Karen!
- Bugscope Team Cate and Will are starting to make the presets for today's session, which starts at 11 our time.
- 10:11am
- 10:16am
- 10:22am
- 10:30am
- Bugscope Team sweet
- 10:36am
- Bugscope Team gnarly ocelli
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll -- early
- Bugscope Team Hi Kristy!
- Guest Hi.
- Guest Are you preparing for a class?
- Bugscope Team where are you connecting from?
- 10:41am
- Guest Huntsville, Alabama
- Bugscope Team yes this is for the 11 a.m. our time connection with Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ.
- Bugscope Team let us know if you would like to drive for a few minutes before they log on
- Guest I am an education specialist from NASA.
- Bugscope Team we're in Central time, here in Illinois
- Bugscope Team Cool. I gave you control of the 'scope
- Guest I will be explaining this software to teachers in a few weeks so I was trying to find out more.
- Guest thanks!
- Bugscope Team the presets are on the left. you can click on any one of those if you'd like the 'scope to drive you to that place
- Bugscope Team of course you're on it already
- Bugscope Team please let us know if you have any questions
- Bugscope Team this is our third user interface in 11+ years
- Guest what buttons should I click. The ones at the top?
- Guest Cool!!
- Bugscope Team focus is up and down -- if it gets worse go the other way
- Bugscope Team so yes the ones on top; and if you want to move the sample, click on the screen and the 'scope will center on that area
- Bugscope Team we had Click to Drive for a long time, but it was easy for someone to run off of the stage
- Guest can I move to another spot on the bug?
Bugscope Team yes!
- 10:46am
- Bugscope Team it's easiest if you go to the lowest mag and then click toward the bottom of the image
- Bugscope Team the 'scope will update to the area you've clicked on
- Guest That is not working for me??
- Guest it is now!
- Bugscope Team good!
- Bugscope Team try clicking once on a particular feature
- Bugscope Team you can take the mag up once you find something that looks interesting
- Bugscope Team it's set up so that students can log on and ask us questions via chat, and we can confer control to them if there teacher lets us
- Bugscope Team oops their teacher
- Bugscope Team the presets are physical locations we've highlighted
- 10:52am
- Guest This is helpful so that I can explain how it works to teachers that may be interested.
Bugscope Team Cool!
- Teacher Hi again!
- Bugscope Team Good morning, Ms J!
- Bugscope Team Welcome back!
- Bugscope Team hi Ms. J
- Bugscope Team Kristy -- Ms J has been working with us for I think 10 years.
- Teacher Yes, we've been doing this FOREVER!
- Teacher So, hopefully our specimens arrived safely. Kids are looking forward to it!
Bugscope Team yes we will be looking at them today, or atleast what I could fit on the stub
- Bugscope Team Ms J you are the supreme ruler -- you may start as soon as you're ready.
- 10:57am
- Teacher Different interface this year...is there any way to get everything to "fit?" Looks like some text is cut off. I'm using Firefox.
Bugscope Team you can scroll down to see the older text; does that work for you?
- Guest That's great Ms. J.
- Teacher Whoops...lost in translation, I mean the "sides of the screen, I'm not seeing everything, like the photos and the text on the right.
Bugscope Team we have it set up so that you can move to the left to see the presets, and then back to the main screen; and to the right you can move to see who's logged on
- Teacher Whoops, again. I now understand the blue arrows!
- Teacher I like that you can see all the presets at once. Makes things a lot easier than in the past.
- Bugscope Team it's definitely different now, but we like it. you can see that it needs some tweaks, like the scale bar and letting you know where you are ("Currently near the").
- Bugscope Team if you click on "More Info," you should see all of the microscope parameters, but presently it's not getting the mag from the 'scope.
- 11:02am
- Guest How often do you partcipate Ms. J.?
Bugscope Team I think she connects once a year -- I don't recall if we do multiple classes with her.
- Teacher We participate once a year...and have since 2002, so it's our 9th year.
- Bugscope Team Kristy every session is different; sometimes the students log on from a computer lab, sometimes the class uses a SmartBoard, sometimes the session is projected on a screen and there are one or two control/chat computers...
- Teacher We're going to have about 75 kids or so for the hour. Some teachers asked if we could wind down about 10-15 minutes early b/c of schedules. So, maybe a 45 minute session or so?
Bugscope Team hey no problem
- Teacher Right now, we're projecting in our school's auditorium. It's very cool to see the bugs BIG.
- Bugscope Team wow totally cool
- Bugscope Team Ms J -- Kristy is an education specialist from NASA who dropped in to check things out today.
- Teacher Anything specific? We're more than happy to share our experience over the years with you.
- Guest Ms. J. and Scot I'd love to contact you about your experience.
Bugscope Team sjrobin@illinois.edu and Cate is ctopha2@illinois.edu
Bugscope Team 217 265 5071
- 11:08am
- Teacher Students are coming in. WE'll be starting soon.
- Bugscope Team Ms J be sure to let us know if you have any trouble getting going today, and be sure of course to let us know when anyone has questions
- Guest I am going to share what bugscope is in a few weeks with teachers. I would just like to find out what you do and how you have used it.
- Teacher The fifth graders say "hi!"
- Bugscope Team hi everyone!
- Bugscope Team Hi! This is the head of a moth, and you can see its compound eyes as well as its coiled proboscis
- Bugscope Team Welcome to Bugscope!
- Teacher We're taking a look at hte stinkbug.
- Teacher So, what are we looking at?
- 11:13am
- Bugscope Team this is a moth
- Bugscope Team we are looking at the compound eye in the middle
- Bugscope Team this is the moth head, and almost in the middle of where we're looking now we see one of the compound eye, which has thousands of facets
- Bugscope Team to the left of the screen you can see the curled up proboscis
- Bugscope Team the facets of the eye are called ommatidia, and each functions like a tiny lens
- Bugscope Team all the "hairy stuff" you see are actually scales
- Bugscope Team if you had compound eyes you would have very good peripheral vision
- Bugscope Team now you can see that the ommatidia, behind the setae we see now, are hexagonal
- Bugscope Team we are up close, and the setae in front of the eye are charging up in the electron beam -- it makes them move around
- Bugscope Team this is the wasp's stinger
- 11:19am
- Bugscope Team it may not look very sharp, but as a lot of you know, they feel sharp enough when they go into our skin!
- Bugscope Team and here you can see a couple of different kinds of pollen
- Bugscope Team here's some pollen grains (the spikey balls are one kind)
- Bugscope Team wasps can sting repeatedly, and we could see that the stinger did not have barbs on it that would keep it stuck in your skin
- Bugscope Team now we see the thorax, which is the 'trunk' or main body section of an insect; it's what the six legs come out of
- Bugscope Team the segments toward the end of the legs are called 'tarsi,' and here you can see one of the claws
- Teacher what's the hairy stuff called?
Bugscope Team some of what look like hairs to us are 'setae,' pronounced see-tee
- 11:24am
- Bugscope Team we can also see some fungal hyphae, which are the 'branches' of mold
- Bugscope Team these were on the leaf you sent us
- Teacher we didn't even know they were bugs on the leaf.
- Bugscope Team this sample is charging up in the electron beam, but we were excited to be able to show it to you since it has these tiny mites on it
- Teacher Do we know the magnification x?
Bugscope Team 1100x
- Bugscope Team this is about the limit of magnification of a light microscope
- Bugscope Team the body is shriveled...
- Bugscope Team this is the wasp's head, of course
- Bugscope Team we usually look at the underside of the insects. They have more interesting features than their backs
- Bugscope Team you can see that one of the antennae is broken
- Bugscope Team and you can compare the compound eyes to those of the moth -- these wrap around the space next to the antennae
- Teacher what are the "things" sicking out of the head?
Bugscope Team those are the antennae
- Bugscope Team you can see the mandibles -- the jaws -- as well.
- Bugscope Team the mandibles open from side to side, unlike ours
- Bugscope Team cool!
- 11:29am
- Bugscope Team you can see the compound eye to the right, now
- Teacher are those pores next to the eye?
- Bugscope Team they do look like tiny pores
- Bugscope Team the eye is to the right and next to those are some setae (bug hairs) that do come out of pores
- Bugscope Team nice job focussing!
- Bugscope Team there might be some other type of pores as well
- Bugscope Team i'm not sure what they are for, maybe some hair got scraped off
- Teacher what is the scientific name for the "nose next to the eyes?
- Bugscope Team insects do not have skin like we do -- they have an 'exoskeleon,' meaning that they have their skeletal support on the outside of the body
- Bugscope Team one part is the 'frons'
- Bugscope Team I'm not sure if that was the frons or the clypeus
- Bugscope Team the rolypoly has compound eyes as well but there are very few ommatidia, and they are a little harder to find
- Bugscope Team rolypolies are crustaceans -- they're not insects
- Teacher is there a leg missing from the roly poly?
Bugscope Team yes. It either fell off in transit or I did it while trying to put it on the stub today
- Bugscope Team insects can get very brittle when they dry
- 11:34am
- Bugscope Team rolypolies have 7 sets of legs
- Teacher why do the legs curl up when they are dead?
Bugscope Team when it dies and dries, the tendons that are responsible for flexing he legs get dry and tight, causing the legs to curl in
- Bugscope Team here's a crane fly and all the legs fell off before I touched it, so don't blame me!!
- Bugscope Team this is the mouth, pointing toward us
- Bugscope Team you can see where the background is different there -- it's where Cate put silver paint down to help get the insects to stick, and also to ground them to the stub we're looking at
- 11:39am
- Bugscope Team everything we see today is inside the vacuum chamber of an electron microscope -- all of the samples you sent us
- Bugscope Team it's a scanning electron microscope, and it works by moving an electron beam repeatedly over the area we see; secondary electrons come back from that area and give us the image we see as signal, in tones of grey from black to white
- Teacher are these like the setae from the other bugs?
Bugscope Team these are a little different; they may help the stinkbug absorb the 'stink,' which it does not like anymore than anything else does.
- Bugscope Team stink bugs are 'true bugs,' and they all have piercing mouthparts like this
- Teacher where does the stink come from ?
Bugscope Team if you bother a stinkbug, you can watch as it produces a droplet of liquid from its abdomen; it comes from glands inside of the abdomen
- 11:44am
- Bugscope Team you can see the little dome-like compound eyes here, and you can see the proboscis, which looks like a bent stick
- Teacher they aren't native, right?
Bugscope Team they are said to be from Asia, but there are many species; I'm not sure they all come from Asia
- Bugscope Team the brown marmorated stink bug was only recently introduced to our continent
- Bugscope Team stink bugs can be found all over North America, and some stink bugs are predators themselves
- Teacher Is that a shell on the grasshopper?
Bugscope Team that's its back plate, kind of works like a shell
- Bugscope Team Cate told me I was wrong about the origin of the stink bug 'scent.' It is said to come from glands on the dorsal side (the top) of the abdomen, and from the underside (the ventral side) of the thorax.
- 11:49am
- Teacher OK, we're going to be wrapping up right now. I'm going to surf around a bit and gather some more images.
- Bugscope Team when I was bothering the stink bug on my screen door, I imagine the stink fluid ran down its body to form the bubble I saw.
- Bugscope Team sure. Thanks for all your attention everybody!
- Teacher The students say, "Thank You!"
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team this is the housefly's mouth
- Bugscope Team in many flies, if the eyes are far apart they are females, like this, and if they are close together, sometimes almost touching, they are males
- Bugscope Team pretty ommatidia
- Teacher just wondering what the ommatidia were made of?
- Bugscope Team they are made of chitin, I think, on the outside. some of them, when we see a broken one, seem to have a crystalline lens inside
- Teacher too far in!
- 11:55am
- Bugscope Team sometimes at high mag we charge the sample up with electrons
- Teacher Students are gone. How much longer do I have to take some pictures?
Bugscope Team you can take another half hour if you'd like
- Teacher Thanks!
- Bugscope Team this is the ocellus
- Teacher what is that?
- Bugscope Team actually you could see all three of them
- Bugscope Team the three 'simple' eyes on the top of the head
- Teacher three eyes?
- Bugscope Team they detect light but don't focus it
- Teacher wow...that's pretty cool.
- 12:00pm
- Bugscope Team yes so they have a total of five eyes, including the compound eyes with all of their facets
- Bugscope Team the ocelli help the insect maintain its sense of direction with respect to the sun
- Teacher Wow, almost couldn't find the legs on this scale bug.
- Bugscope Team this is just weird -- something we've not seen before
- Bugscope Team actually there are a lot of things, still, that we don't understand about insects. but that is pretty cool.
- Teacher where are its parts? It just looks like a big mass.
Bugscope Team really I am not sure.
- Bugscope Team 'adult females are almost always immobile and permanently attached to the plant they have parasitized.'
- Bugscope Team the little ones are called 'crawlers'
- Teacher Wow. Guess that explains it.
- 12:05pm
- Bugscope Team I think it explains the disparity in size we saw.
- Bugscope Team mold spores are similar but less spikey, and they often collapse when they dry
- Bugscope Team I'm sitting at the 'scope and can make little tweaks to the focus.
- Teacher The kids were amazed by the pollen.
Bugscope Team cool! sometimes we look at bees with no pollen to bee found on them'
- Bugscope Team this is one of the antennae, up close of course
- Teacher what is this stuff?
- Bugscope Team the placoid sensilla -- the long oval things -- we think are chemoreceptors, as well as those pointy things with pores in the tips
- 12:10pm
- Bugscope Team centipedes are said to have poison glands in the last few segments, and we were thinking that is what these are
- Teacher Or airplane windows.
- Bugscope Team oh yeah -- or that!
- Bugscope Team the more you do this, sometimes the less sure of yourself you are; there are so many variations in insects and arthropods
- Bugscope Team the little oval things lower middle, at the edge of the image, are mold spores -- yo can see really only one
- Bugscope Team male scale insects are said to closely resemble flies (Diptera) but not to have halteres.
- Bugscope Team here we see microsetae on the wing surface
- Teacher Just a few more images and then I'll be signing off.
- Bugscope Team and here we see the tenent setae that help many insects stick to vertical surfaces
- 12:15pm
- Bugscope Team usually they're found on a pad called the 'pulvillus.'
- Bugscope Team like tiny cobras
- Teacher curious how the fly differs from the ladybug.
Bugscope Team yes and in different areas they may be different as well
- Bugscope Team and many claws open and close via control by a tendon called an unguitractor, but this looks more like a grappling hook (on the ladybug...)
- Teacher Just comparing the different claws
- Bugscope Team this is one of the kind that I believe can open and close
- Bugscope Team you've been with us since we had an observer, a controller, and a chat box, and Daniel and I did most of the sessions.
- Teacher a spiracle?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Bugscope Team lots of dirt/juju
- 12:21pm
- Teacher OK, I think we're all set here in Ho-Ho-Kus. I have a class to get to! Thank you so much for everything over the past years. This is such a wonderful program.
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team See you next year!
- Teacher Definitely! Have a good weekend!
- Bugscope Team you too! (this is Scott)
- Bugscope Team Karen, Kristy, Julie, Sam, Rachel and Rudy please let me know if you have questions. or would like to drive.
- Teacher Signing off!
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Bugscope Team If no one is interested I may go ahead and shut down here.
- Bugscope Team alright, time to get some food... Thank You!
