Connected on 2011-02-01 08:30:00 from , Tamaulipas, Mexico
- 8:07am
- Bugscope Team David I am trying to make presets.
- Bugscope Team We connect at 8:30, right?
- Bugscope Team I locked the controls so I can finish making the presets.
- Teacher should I log off or just wait
- Bugscope Team no it's fine if you can just wait
- 8:13am
- 8:19am
- 8:25am
- Bugscope Team hey no problem -- I am trying to give you as many choices as possible
- 8:31am
- Bugscope Team MrB you should have control now
- Teacher will we be able to log in the students when you release the controls?
- Bugscope Team please try it out, let me know if you have any problems, we are ready to roll
- Bugscope Team yes you can
- Bugscope Team anytime
- Bugscope Team click to center should work for you now
- Bugscope Team you should be able to log students in as students, from the drop-down choices, and they should not need passwords
- Teacher we´re having problems with our wireless student connections but mine is working,student swill be here at 8:36
- Bugscope Team mosquito compound eye
- Bugscope Team good morning!
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team please let us know when you have questions!
- 8:38am
- Bugscope Team these are the sponging mouthparts of a tiny fly
- 8:43am
- Teacher we}re on, good morning and thanks
- Bugscope Team yay!
- Bugscope Team they rarely look this good
- Bugscope Team if you take the mag down you can see where you are on the fly's head
- Bugscope Team good job focussing -- it's basically up or down
- Bugscope Team this is a male mosquito eye
- Bugscope Team mosca-ito
- Bugscope Team this mosquito was sent to us in ethanol, and then we critical point dried it
- 8:48am
- Bugscope Team we usually call this Aztec salt
- Bugscope Team it doesn't look like normal salt -- it has those incised features
- Bugscope Team students please feel free to ask us questions
- Student why is it called aztec salt
- Bugscope Team we call it Aztec because to us it looks like Aztec carvings
- Student Cool
- Bugscope Team it has an anti-caking agent in it we think that gives them these cool shapes
- Bugscope Team the sodium chloride still forms a cubic crystal but it has those incised patterns
- Student is it chemically similar to table salt
Bugscope Team yes it is but it may have sodium azide in it as well
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a hawk moth
- Bugscope Team those furry things are all scales
- Bugscope Team moths and butterflies are covered with scales, and the scales charge up with electrons
- Student what is the greatest magnification you can get?
Bugscope Team we can go over 600,000x, but there's not much to see there
- 8:53am
- Bugscope Team when we use the microscope for research, which is most of the time, the max mag for publishable images is usually about 200,000x
- Bugscope Team when we use the 'scope for Bugscope, we keep the sample at a long working distance from the electron source so we can get low mag images
- Student How much this microscope cost?
Bugscope Team around 12 years ago it cost around $600,000
- Student wow!
- Bugscope Team these are the tarsi -- the 'forearm' segments
- Bugscope Team looks like a scale from another insect there
- Bugscope Team the thing that looks like a surfboard
- Student How many people usually enters to this page? (daily)
Bugscope Team we run usually two Bugscope sessions a week, so usually it is just two schools a week, plus guests.
- Bugscope Team people can log on as guests whenever a session is running
- 8:58am
- Bugscope Team the rest of the time people use the microscope for their research
- Bugscope Team here is a close up view of a scale
- Bugscope Team people look at nanopatterning they've done, self-healing polymers, bacteria, food samples, flexible silicon, pollen
- Bugscope Team you can see the holes in it-- they help make the scales lighter, and also they bend the light- creating colors
- Bugscope Team we don't get entomologists very often, but the week of the 14th they'll be here looking at their own insects all week
- Student is there a simple explanation of how an electron microscope works?
Bugscope Team http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/training/EM_tutorial/ is an animated flash video we made
- Bugscope Team you could learn in an hour no proble,
- Bugscope Team no problem..
- Student How many years I need to study to be able to use this microscope?
Bugscope Team it is really easy to use
Bugscope Team It's uncommon for grade schools to have access to an electron microscope, but if you're in the sciences it's not uncommon to get to use one during a lab class at the college level
Bugscope Team And then of course the majority of the serious work is done by graduate students
- Bugscope Team these are the mandibles
- 9:03am
- Bugscope Team there is some juju right where they meet
- Student cute!
- Bugscope Team you can see another insect's scale there, above
- Bugscope Team the insect may have thrown up when it died, and that's what that little blob is
- Bugscope Team ladybugs eat other insects, often little ones like aphids
- Bugscope Team there is an aphid on the stub today
- Student what is juju?
- Bugscope Team juju is our all-purpose term for slime or junk or stuff we don't recognize
- Student thx foe explaining juju
- Bugscope Team this is a small area on the antenna of this wasp
- Bugscope Team insect 'hairs' are called setae, pronounced see-tee
- Student giiuu!!
- Bugscope Team the setae can be mechanosensory -- touch sensitive
- Bugscope Team they can be chemosensory, meaning they can taste chemicals in the air or that touch them
- 9:09am
- Bugscope Team they can be thermosensory -- hot/cold sensing
- Bugscope Team and near claws there are often sticky pads that have 'tenent setae' on them
- Bugscope Team tenent, like Spanish 'tener,' means that the tiny setae hold onto things
- Bugscope Team when we get really close to the sample like this, it can charge up with electrons
- Bugscope Team those lines we are seeing are from what is called 'charging'
- Bugscope Team when we beam electrons at a sample, like we are doing, we want the sample to be conductive or else the electrons will not be shed -- they won't go to ground
- Student why is their a cavity in the chemo receptors?¿
- Bugscope Team so the samples are coated with gold-palladium to make them conductive
- Student How can you test the animal to know if they are thermosensory, chemosensory or mechanosensory???????
Bugscope Team we don't always know, but entomologists can mask receptors and see if the insect does not respond to a stimulus, for example
- Bugscope Team the cavity sometimes is the place where the chemical scents, for example, are collected
- 9:14am
- Student what is that part of the bug
Bugscope Team this is the ovipositor tip. It's used to deposit eggs
- Bugscope Team insects get a great deal of information from the air, as from pheromones
- Bugscope Team ants get almost all of their 'marching orders' from chemical scents
- Teacher where do the eggs come out?
Bugscope Team the eggs come out of that slit, which looks very thin since it's a bit desiccated
- Student so everytime a fly stands in my food they leave eggs or juju?
Bugscope Team no that is a myth. They might spit on your food to help dissolve it before slurping it up, which is still gross
- Bugscope Team there are many species of tiny parasitic wasps that use their stingers both as stingers and as ovipositors; they inject their eggs into caterpillars that they have paralyzed with their venom
- Student O.0
- Bugscope Team yeah be sure to tip your flies so they don't spit on your food
- Student Thanks for the tip!
- Student :)
- Bugscope Team ocelli are simple eyes that help flying insects keep oriented with the sun, or with dark/light
- 9:19am
- Bugscope Team fruit flies eat rotting fruit
- Bugscope Team we don't have any spiders in the 'scope today, but they have eight eyes that are often not very good
- Student Do you have coakoroaches in exhibition???
- Bugscope Team here you can see the antennae, coming out of the front of the fly's head
- Bugscope Team flies in general like to consume decaying matter. If it's old rotten food, that is where they might lay eggs. They lay their eggs in a place where the larvae can easily feed without looking too hard for food- like the garbage can
- Bugscope Team there was something that looked like a roach...
- Bugscope Team I can try to drive us to it...
- Student Why everything needs to be in greyish?
- Bugscope Team oops well this was tiny and I thought it might've been a roach, but it is a leafhopper
- Bugscope Team this is the head of the big wasp
- Bugscope Team you can see its ocelli, sort of in the middle of the head
- Student it looks like a heart
- Student Whats that juju?
Bugscope Team you mean stuck to the antenna?
- 9:25am
- Student yeap
Bugscope Team couldn't really tell -- you know we see a lot of stuff we don't recognize, even after doing this for so long
- Bugscope Team here you can see a couple of spiracles, which are like breathing tubes
- Student what would happen if a parastic wasp stung you?
Bugscope Team parasitic wasps probably wont lay eggs in you. They like to lay their eggs in insects like caterpillars
Bugscope Team it would still inject you with the venom, so if you are allergic be careful. The stinging of a parasitic wasp is used to paralyze the insect/spider. Then it later lays the eggs.
- Student thnks
- Bugscope Team and you can see the shaft of the haltere, bottom middle of the screen now
- Student thankyou for answering our questions
- Student how can you know if its a parastic wasp or not?
Bugscope Team they are often very small, solitary, and have long stingers; the people coming in in 2 weeks study them
- Bugscope Team yeah no problem- we like doing this. Thanks for taking the time to do bugscope with us
- Teacher thanks guys, bell has rung so you´re free to do your other jobs! you had 150 middle school kids who reallyy got off on it.
- Bugscope Team this is the haltere
- Student well, thanks for the insect tour! I really enjoyed it!!! It was interesting to see all those cool insects with zoom. -Montse :0) and Andrea :)
- Student what do you reaserch about when your not in a guest session
Bugscope Team we run a lab with various microscopes. When we aren't using them, we have students or faculty using them.
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team Bye you all!
- Student Do you like Justin Bieber???
Bugscope Team he's a little too young for us
- Bugscope Team Cate likes him, really.
- Student Good Luck with your research!-Montse _0)
- Student bye mariel thank you!!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team at any time you can go to your member page and look at the chat and the images from today
- Bugscope Team https://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2010-136 is your member page
- 9:30am
- Bugscope Team this is inside the chamber where your samples are
