Connected on 2011-05-05 19:00:00 from Alameda, California, United States
- 5:49pm
- Bugscope Team microscope is pumping down
- Bugscope Team still pumping down
- Bugscope Team presently you can see the inside of the vacuum chamber with the samples laid out on the 1.75-in.-diameter stub
- 5:55pm
- Bugscope Team slow-ly pumping down...
- 6:01pm
- 6:07pm
- 6:13pm
- 6:19pm
- 6:24pm
- 6:29pm
- Bugscope Team making presets for today's session
- Bugscope Team the presets are all visible on the lefthand screen
- 6:35pm
- Bugscope Team alright! we are ready to roll!
- 6:40pm
- Bugscope Team hello!
- Bugscope Team I am re-doing a bunch of presets since the stage jumped a little while ago and goofed up the ones I'd saved
- 6:45pm
- 6:51pm
- Bugscope Team totally cool
- Bugscope Team Hello S! Welcome to Bugscope!
- 6:57pm
- Bugscope Team okay cool we are in business
- 7:08pm
- Teacher Hello Sandhya!
- Bugscope Team ha that is who S is, then...
- Guest Yes that's me.
- Bugscope Team mites!
- Bugscope Team all over this weevil you sent
- Guest So do I get to see the bug I caught?
Bugscope Team we put some of them on the stub -- Cate did. So I am not sure what you sent.
- Bugscope Team this one came from Michele
- Bugscope Team so it could've been yours, S
- Bugscope Team a big ol' weevil
- Bugscope Team which are also called snout beetles
- Guest Ok
- Teacher Scott - can you tell us about these mites?
Bugscope Team we see them on earwigs; they don't have eyes; we are not sure whether they eat detritus or burrow into the chitin somehow
- Bugscope Team there are lots of different kinds of mites, and we think these get on the insects when they spend time in the dirt
- 7:13pm
- Bugscope Team but rolypolies (which are crustaceans, not insects) do not get mites, or none that we have seen
- Bugscope Team you can barely see these by eye
- Bugscope Team they're about a fifth of a millimeter long
- Bugscope Team there's an upside-down one
- Teacher Do they get on people?
- Bugscope Team I don't think so. People have their own specialized mites, like in their eyelashes, but we have not see those.
- Bugscope Team dustmites are softbodied, so when you find them they are almost always shriveled, like aphids
- Bugscope Team nice job driving!
- Teacher Cool!!
- Teacher and gross.....
- Bugscope Team you can see some fungal hyphae to the right
- Bugscope Team this weevil was rotting -- covered with mold
- Bugscope Team some junk on the carapace...
- Bugscope Team to the right is the fungus
- Bugscope Team actually the forked thing to the far left is the mite's head stalk
- 7:18pm
- Bugscope Team or what we think of as that when we see them head on
- Bugscope Team heh
- Bugscope Team often we find that stingers and cutting mouthparts are like this, with cutting surfaces that slide past each other
- Teacher Hi Scot I'm Tina we are interested in the wasp stinger
- Bugscope Team the laciniae of a flea look like a chainsaw
- Teacher Where does the poison come out?
Bugscope Team sometimes it seems we see a single pore, but lately we've seen more stingers that have a whole bunch of tiny pores in them
- Bugscope Team through which the venom oozes
- Bugscope Team yeah see how it looks kind of porous?
- Teacher Would you please drive us to a pore and center it
- Teacher ?
- Bugscope Team spiders have serious pores
- Bugscope Team hard to tell if these are open or just on the surface
- 7:23pm
- Bugscope Team ugh you can also see where we left some contamination from the beam on the stinger
- Teacher what are the tubes we see here?
- Bugscope Team in a rectangular patten
- Bugscope Team they look like tiny setae
- Bugscope Team really I don't know; setae can be mechanosensory, chemosensory, thermosensory, or they can have functions like helping the insect stick to a surface
- Teacher Hi, I'm Heather. Can you please drive us to some setae?
Bugscope Team I just moved us to some plumose setae -- meaning they are shaped like long pine trees
- Teacher Where are we and what exactly are we looking at?
Bugscope Team when you have a question like that, you can try taking the mag down to see, perhaps, where you are
- Bugscope Team ha that was helpful, wasn't it?
- Bugscope Team but now you can start to make out the head of the dermestid beetle larva, to the right
- Bugscope Team and you can see that it has six legs -- because it is an insect, and all insects have six legs
- 7:28pm
- Bugscope Team although not all arthropods with six legs are insects
- Bugscope Team awesome
- Bugscope Team theses are bad little dudes
- Bugscope Team these...
- Teacher We think he looks like he's praying
- Bugscope Team museums use them to take all of the meat off of skeletons
- Bugscope Team they pray before eating
- Teacher why are they bad?
Bugscope Team because they can get loose and eat, for example, all of the leather samples in a museum
- Bugscope Team so people like them but have to be careful not to let them loose
- Bugscope Team but if you had a skeleton of a small bird or something and you wanted all the flesh to be gone, the dermestids would be pleased to help with that
- Bugscope Team I think this is a paper wasp. A bunch of them get into the building in the winter.
- Teacher Hi, I'm Elise.
Bugscope Team Hi Elise!
- Teacher Do you know what kind of wasp this was?
- Bugscope Team um I think it is some sort of paper wasp. it is larger than the parasitic wasps we've been looking at lately
- 7:34pm
- Teacher Do you think this is the one I found on my lemon tree?
Bugscope Team I think this is one Cate took out of our 'stock'
- Bugscope Team their jaws -- mandibles -- open left and right, like little gates
- Bugscope Team they are kind of forked
- Bugscope Team the dark space is between the mandible and the head
- Teacher Why are there setae on the eye?
Bugscope Team when we see setae on the compound eye, they are usually -- we think -- mechanosensory, which means they are touch sensitive
- Teacher Will you please drive us to the jaw
Bugscope Team that is one of the mandibles -- jaws
- Bugscope Team below it you can see (could see) now there it is -- part of the 'tongue'
- Teacher What's that little fringe?
Bugscope Team the fringe helps it lap up liquids, assuming this is one of those wasps that likes sugary stuff
- Bugscope Team but if it's a paper wasp it may help it wet and mold the 'paper' that forms the nest
- 7:39pm
- Bugscope Team the reason we see so many setae in insects is because they have exoskeletons, so it's like they have armor
- Teacher or a bettle?
- Teacher Hi Scot! I'm Alma could you please show us a ladybug?
Bugscope Team Alma I am sorry we don't have any ladybugs in the 'scope today. But someone moved us to the beetle, which is as close as we can get.
- Bugscope Team you can see that one of the antennae is busted off, but the one on the left is intact
- Teacher cool Thanks!
- Bugscope Team above the beetle's head is a butterfly's wing
- Bugscope Team the scales are charging up with electrons
- Bugscope Team which is what the glowing is
- Teacher what is the stage made out of?
Bugscope Team the stage is aluminum, with carbon doublestick tape on it, and we also use silver paint to help ground the insects/bugs
- Bugscope Team it is very hard to get enough gold-palladium on the scales to ground them
- Bugscope Team so they glow like this -- they retain the electrons the microscope is hitting them with
- Bugscope Team you can go to the butterfly scale preset, however -- I had found a better place to look, earlier
- Teacher could you please show us something else?
- Teacher the scales are very amazing
Bugscope Team scales serve multiple purposes
- 7:44pm
- Guest the scales look like roof tiles
Bugscope Team yes! like shake shingles
- Teacher what purposes do they serve?
- Bugscope Team when a moth or butterfly or mosquito flies into a web, it can leave its scales stuck to the web and slip out
- Bugscope Team also, the scales help with thermoregulation, and they provide color, both structural color and that from pigments
- Bugscope Team this is salt from a Wendy's restaurant
- Bugscope Team and this is sugar
- Bugscope Team sugar you can see does not come in cubic crystals
- Bugscope Team whereas sodium chloride -- table salt -- does
- Guest this is one grain of sugar?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Teacher Scot - for our last request, will you drive us to your favorite view on anyof these specimens?
- Teacher Scot - how do you coat the specimens? How is it sprayed onto the objects?
Bugscope Team we use a sputter coater, which pulls a good vacuum; then we add argon gas, and then we run a current through the argon, which makes it glow purple
- Bugscope Team the argon plasma erodes gold-palladium from the target (of Au/Pd), and that rains on the sample, in nanometer thickness
- 7:49pm
- Teacher Scot - for our last request, will you drive us to your favorite view on anyof these specimens?
Bugscope Team leafhoppers are my favorites, at least much of the time
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- Bugscope Team these tiny things are brochosomes, which are maybe 400 nm in diameter
- Bugscope Team and the things that look like beads, the large ones, are mold spores
- Bugscope Team and the pointy things are the surface of the leafhopper's shell
- Bugscope Team so we were just looking at nanoparticles
- Bugscope Team on the leg of a leafhopper
- Bugscope Team that was my fave for today
- Bugscope Team the 'shell' is the exoskeleton, made of chitin
- Bugscope Team is that it?
- Teacher Thanks for driving and sharing! We are going to sign off for now. Thanks again for a great session as always! The teachers LOVED it - lots of oohhss and aahhs!
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-033
- Bugscope Team sweet
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team Bye!
- Teacher Bye!
- Guest thank you and bye
- 7:55pm
- Bugscope Team Oh Bye S!
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
