Connected on 2011-10-24 10:15:00 from Calhoun, Georgia, United States
- 9:13am
- Bugscope Team sample is coating right now; next step is to put it into the 'scope
- Bugscope Team yo
- Bugscope Team K putting sample into the 'scope in just a sec
- 9:20am
- Bugscope Team there it is in the CCD view; now pumping down
- 9:27am
- Bugscope Team vacuum is almost there
- Bugscope Team we will start making presets in a minute
- 9:37am
- 9:43am
- 9:50am
- 9:58am
- 10:03am
- 10:09am
- 10:14am
- 10:19am
- 10:30am
- 10:38am
- Bugscope Team we are ready to roll!
- 10:44am
- Bugscope Team welcome to Bugscope!
- Bugscope Team this is a small colony of mites living on the 'shoulder' of a female earwig
- Teacher thanks for the call
Bugscope Team you bet!
- Bugscope Team so you've already found that you can change the mag
- Bugscope Team you can also click on any of the presets on the screen to the left
- Bugscope Team and the 'scope will drive you to that position
- Bugscope Team now you can see the earwig's head, to the north
- Bugscope Team you can also click on the screen itself to center what you want to look at
- Bugscope Team this is one of the eyes of a huge praying mantis
- Bugscope Team the mantis was about 4 inches long, huge for us
- Teacher that is large
- Bugscope Team so I put its head and one of its forearms on today's stub
- Teacher how was the eye damaged?
Bugscope Team someone mailed it to us in a flat package, no protection, so it got smashed
- Bugscope Team to the right you can see the base of one antenna, and one of the three ocelli -- simple eyes -- on the top of the head
- 10:49am
- Bugscope Team please let us know whenever you have questions or it you have any problems dirving
- Bugscope Team duh like I have problems spelling 'driving'
- Teacher lol
- Bugscope Team the large lobes we see are the chelicerae, or chelicers, which hold the fangs
- Teacher little more than our school budget
- Bugscope Team the fangs are curved inward and masked to us with lots of setae
- Teacher what type of spider is this?
Bugscope Team it's a small brown spider, a female
- Bugscope Team you can see its eyes, all eight of them
- Bugscope Team spiders and almost all insects/arthropods we see often look surprisingly 'hairy' to us.
- Bugscope Team that's because they have an exoskeleton, and it's sort of like if you were wearing a coat of armor all of the time -- you wouldn't be able to feel things touching you
- Bugscope Team this is the face of a cockroach
- 10:55am
- Teacher what type of roach is this?
Bugscope Team um I think it's a German cockroach
- Teacher our class has a set of madagascar hissing cockroaches in the room
Bugscope Team yeah if we put one of those in the 'scope there would be no room for anything else
- Bugscope Team also of course it would not be very happy in the vacuum
- Bugscope Team coated with gold-palladium to make it conductive
- Bugscope Team roaches can survive for awhile in the vacuum. they just close their spiracles and thus kind of hold their breath
- Bugscope Team so this is the face, smooth but a lot of junk on it. dirt, tiny bristles...
- Bugscope Team roaches are actually not that interesting in the SEM because they are so streamlined -- they have no specialize features
- Bugscope Team 'specialized' features
- Bugscope Team now you can see a piece of the wing of a dragonfly
- Bugscope Team and to the top of where we are now is part of a large moth's wing
- Bugscope Team the scales on the moth's wing are similar to those of mosquitoes, butterflies, silverfish, and very few other insects
- 11:00am
- Bugscope Team here you can see some super tiny salt crystals in the 'hand' of a housefly
- Bugscope Team it is likely they are sodium chloride, since they make those cubic crystals
- Teacher why is the object moving?
Bugscope Team when we hit something with high-energy electrons, which is what we do when we're imaging using the SEM, it can make the sample move, especially at high mag. this is 21,818x, not super high, but the sample is sensitive to the electron beam
- Teacher ok
- Bugscope Team the samples are dry or we could not get the vacuum to pump down, and they are not conductive, so we have to coat them with a thin layer of gold-palladium
- Bugscope Team take the mag down a bit and you can see where you are
- Bugscope Team if you'd like
- Bugscope Team an electron microscope is like an old-style TV
- Teacher ok
- Teacher class change
- Bugscope Team cool!
- Bugscope Team I can drive the 'scope from here, of course
- 11:05am
- Bugscope Team now you can see the fly's claws, and the pad called the 'pulvillus' that allows it to walk on vertical surfaces
- Teacher lunch time. can we resume at 12:26? I know I've only got the scope reserved until 1:15 EST
- Bugscope Team sure! I can go get food as well and will be right back!
- Bugscope Team also, we can go longer if you'd like...
- Bugscope Team brb
- Teacher my next class comes in at 12:26 and i'd like to have them see it. see u at 12:26 EST
- 11:13am
- Bugscope Team totally cool
- Bugscope Team Mr B if you can work past 1:15 EST we can as well. We have the microscope until 2:30 your time.
- 11:20am
- 11:27am
- Teacher ok. i need to give a quick test/review. i wasn't sure that it was possible to go a bit longer
- Bugscope Team no problem we are all good
- Teacher can we go until 1:25 my time?
Bugscope Team yes we can
- Teacher if so, i'll give the test quickly and then come back to u in a few minutes and we can have a good 30 minutes or so to use the scope
- Bugscope Team totally cool
- Bugscope Team I will be fixing a couple of things here
- Teacher thanks for being so flexible in all of this
- Bugscope Team no problem!
- 11:37am
- 12:03pm
- Teacher back
- Bugscope Team welcome back!
- Bugscope Team this is one of the housefly's claws
- Bugscope Team the little pads like hairy carcher
- Bugscope Team hairy catcher's mitts... are called the pulvillus
- Bugscope Team the tiny hairs we see, called 'setae,' are specialized to help the fly stick to surfaces when it walks
- Bugscope Team the individual setae are called 'tenent setae.'
- Bugscope Team this is a colony of mites on the thorax of an earwig, in a place in which the earwig cannot easily brush them
- Bugscope Team away
- Teacher Do the mites irritate the bug they are on?
Bugscope Team we don't know
- Bugscope Team there is what looks like a very good book on mites but it is $174
- Bugscope Team I guess I could buy it for Bugscope
- Teacher no worries, just curious
- Bugscope Team these mites do not have eyes, and when their host dies they apparently 'go down with the ship'
- 12:08pm
- Bugscope Team we are not sure whether they suck hemolymph through the cuticle of the earwig or possible eat scraps of food the earwig misses
- Bugscope Team this is a roach, of course
- Teacher interesting
- Bugscope Team its eyes are streamlined into its head
- Teacher where are the eyes of the roach?
- Bugscope Team very smooth
- Teacher can u pinpoint the eyes for us?
- Bugscope Team you can see its antennae and also its palps
- Bugscope Team that is the left eye
- Bugscope Team it's a compound eye, and the facets are smooth compared to the eye facets of a fly, for example
- Bugscope Team the eye facets are called 'ommatidia'
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a dragonfly
- Bugscope Team see the compound eyes here?
- Bugscope Team you can see the bases of the antennae
- 12:14pm
- Bugscope Team like in the center of the image here
- Teacher another one broke off in the mail?
Bugscope Team yes they break so easily
- Bugscope Team this is a female housefly
- Bugscope Team you can tell with some flies because the males have the eyes super close together, like Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the females have their eyes far apart, like Uma Thurman.
- Bugscope Team these are the mouthparts, and we don't see them like we would in life -- they are kind of dried out
- Teacher i remember counting sex bristles on flies in genetics in college
Bugscope Team ha Yeah you could've just looked at the eyes.
- Bugscope Team actually it only works with some flies
- Teacher fruit flies?
Bugscope Team I don't think it works with fruit flies.
- Bugscope Team this is cool
- Bugscope Team the viens on the wings have little spines on them
- Bugscope Team veins, sorry
- Teacher function of the spines?
- 12:20pm
- Bugscope Team I am not sure, but I think one function is to keep them from sticking too tightly to flat surfaces when they are wet
- Bugscope Team you might also be dissuaded from eating a wing if it had spines on it
- Bugscope Team so it might protect all dragonflies to have spines on their wings
- Bugscope Team of course they are super small
- Bugscope Team here we see where the spider's fangs are curved into the bases of the chelicerae
- Bugscope Team they can spread those chelicers to bite you
- Bugscope Team female spiders can be much larger than males
- Bugscope Team but also, males usually have larger palps -- those things that look like legs on either side of the chelicerae
- Bugscope Team this is a female -- the palps are small at the ends, whereas with a male they may look more like boxing gloves, swollen at the ends.
- Bugscope Team spiders have lots of mechanosensory setae, and they are often shaped like tiny long pine trees
- 12:25pm
- Bugscope Team some spiders also have what are called 'urticating hairs,' which they release if you come too close. they irritate your eyes and nasal passages.
- Teacher thanks so much
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Teacher my class greatly appreciated your time
- Bugscope Team See you next year?
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-079
- Teacher thought we might send something in next time
- Bugscope Team below is your member page
- Teacher most def. any possibility of working it again in the spring?
Bugscope Team please apply again right away -- we have been getting a lot of applications, into the Spring for sure
- Bugscope Team Kendra can find you a good time when you apply.
- Teacher thanks again. i'll be in contact
- Bugscope Team Thank You! See You!
