Connected on 2011-11-07 13:50:00 from Travis, Texas, United States
- 12:49pm
- Guest what are we looking at?
- Bugscope Team I'm getting ready to put the sample in.
- Guest oh
- Bugscope Team So you can see me - part of me - for a minute.
- Guest i see
- Guest just signed up for a session
Bugscope Team Cool!
- Bugscope Team so now you see the inside of the sample chamber
- Bugscope Team using a CCD camera that is at the back of the chamber
- Guest we have been here before and really like it
Bugscope Team yeah totally cool
- Bugscope Team (this is Scot)
- Guest hey scot remembered your name from last year
- Bugscope Team I am on the control computer as well as the 'scope itself today
- Bugscope Team so now the sample chamber is pumping down
- Bugscope Team the large thing you can barely see to the left is the cephalothorax of a tarantula
- Guest just checking out what ur doing
Bugscope Team we start with today's participant at 1:50, in just less than an hour
- Guest not sure I can hang out much longer as I have a class right now
Bugscope Team hey Thank You for checking in!
- Guest ok
- 12:54pm
- Bugscope Team the big deal now is getting the sample to pump down. if one of the critters is super juicy it could take a while
- Guest looking forward to doing this again - you guys are awesome!
Bugscope Team Thank You! Our biggest problem at the moment is more people know about us, so we are booking well into next year now
- 1:06pm
- Bugscope Team we are waiting for the vacuum to get just a bit better so we can start the electron beam
- Bugscope Team then we will make some adjustments to the microscope and start making presets for today's session
- Bugscope Team Hi Doris!
- Bugscope Team Where are you connecting from?
- Bugscope Team just a bit more and we will be able to turn the beam on
- Guest NYC
- Bugscope Team Cool!
- Bugscope Team I was there a few weeks ago. Visited the protestors twice, since I was staying in the Financial District
- Guest I found your site last Thursday and will give a presentation to our Science faculty around 3pm
- Guest I will include this site since I think it is a great resource
- Bugscope Team today?
- Guest I am working for the School of Education at CCNY
- Guest Yes, today
- 1:11pm
- Bugscope Team I think we may still be on -- live -- at 3 your time. Or we will have just finished a session.
- Guest I am a supporting our faculty with technology and instructional resources
- Guest I was hoping you will be on. We will see.
- Bugscope Team Let me know if you want to do a quick live connection with us during your talk.
- Guest That would be great.
- Bugscope Team I'm turning the beam on now and getting ready to find some presets for today's session in Texas. They will be on at 1:50, which is 2:50 your time. So we may not have much time to talk with you but should be up and running.
- Bugscope Team this is snakeskin
- Guest Just observing the session for few minutes will be great. I am in my office right now and will have to log in from the computer in the conference room again. I will be Doris2 there, just that you know who I am when I log in. Thank you!
- 1:16pm
- Bugscope Team sweet
- Bugscope Team this is Scot. 217 265 5071. sjrobin@illinois.edu
- Guest 212 650 5795 dgrasserbauer@ccny.cuny.edu; Nice meeting you!
- Bugscope Team nice to meet you! Thank you, Doris!
- 1:22pm
- Bugscope Team Hello Mrs Morgan!
- Bugscope Team Welcome back to Bugscope!
- 1:27pm
- Teacher This is Mr. Morgan. We just went through a quick presentation on electron microscopes with the kiddos. So they should be ready to go during the session.
Bugscope Team Great!
- Bugscope Team we are still finding and saving presets for your session
- Bugscope Team head of small moth
- Bugscope Team I thought this was a parasitic wasp but it looks like it is a male ant.
- Bugscope Team unfortunately it has no head
- Teacher Awesome. We had a session with ya'll in January 2011 with a different class. The kids loved it. Ya'll do an excellent job!
- Bugscope Team we will do our best today -- this is all stuff you sent
- 1:32pm
- Teacher What did you do with the Trantula that was sent?
Bugscope Team we'll see it soon, as much of it as I could get on the stub
- 1:38pm
- Teacher Sorry about that, I dad brought it in to us Alive. Felt like I had to send it.
Bugscope Team hey no problem. not sure how good it will look today. it is so big, and it was a bit tricky to position it
- 1:44pm
- 1:50pm
- Teacher I think we are ready when you are ready for us.
Bugscope Team great!
- 1:55pm
- Bugscope Team we are ready to go!
- Teacher Ok.
- Bugscope Team you have control of the microscope and can change mag, change contrast/brightness, click on an object to center it...
- Bugscope Team this is the junebug!
- Bugscope Team you can see it's mouthparts, and its antennae, and its eyes
- Bugscope Team the things that look like little arms/legs are palps, which help the junebug taste its food and also manipulate it into its mouth
- Teacher is this his mouth?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Bugscope Team with insect mouths it is often difficult to see exactly where it starts and ends
- Teacher what are the bumps
- Bugscope Team the big things that look like boxing gloves or submarine sandwiches are the lobes of its antennae
- Bugscope Team the antennae are lamellated, and they can fold open like a paper fan
- 2:01pm
- Bugscope Team inside those lamellae -- the layers of the antenna -- are chemsensors
- Teacher what are the hair like items used for?
Bugscope Team the hairs, which entomologists call 'setae,' are used by the insect to help sense its environment
- Bugscope Team insects do not have skin like we do. instead they have a shell, called an exoskeleton
- Bugscope Team an exoskeleton -- a skeleton on the outside of the body rather than the inside -- is kind of like a coat of armor
- Bugscope Team the setae stick through that armor, and on the inside they are connected to nerves
- Bugscope Team some of the setae are mechanosensory, which means they can sense touch, and also wind
- Teacher what do june bugs eat?
Bugscope Team they eat the foliage -- the leaves, mostly -- of plants
- Bugscope Team they also like peaches, and grapes, and corn, so they are not welcome at farms
- 2:06pm
- Bugscope Team when they are larvae, they eat the roots of grass, so they might produce dead spots in your lawn
- Bugscope Team the tarantula was wet, so these are its setae, which are kind of gummed together like it was using a lot of hairspray
- Bugscope Team spiders are super sensitive to vibration, and they use that sense often more than they use their eyes
- Bugscope Team setae can also be thermosensory (hot/cold), and they can be chemosensory, allowing them to taste the air
- Bugscope Team some spiders, like tarantulas, have what are called urticating hairs that they release. those hairs get into your nostrils and are very irritating
- Teacher how many Setae do they normally have?
Bugscope Team they have thousands of setae -- they are quite hairy
- 2:11pm
- Bugscope Team when we see setae that resemble pine trees -- setae that have what are kind of like branches on all sides -- those are called plumose setae. we think that those are almost all mechanosensory. that is, they are sensitive to vibration and to touch
- Bugscope Team let us know if you have any trouble driving
- Bugscope Team now we see large and small setae
- Bugscope Team some of the smaller ones may be the urticating hairs
- Teacher We are trying to go to the spider eyes
- Bugscope Team urticaria is 'itching'
- Bugscope Team the spider had a kind of Mohawk hairdo
- Bugscope Team the eyes are really quite small considering how large this spider was
- Bugscope Team there are usually eight eyes
- Bugscope Team when we use this kind of electron microscope we cannot see into things, so we cannot see into the eye
- Bugscope Team we can only see surfaces, but we can see them with very good resolution
- 2:16pm
- Bugscope Team flies and some other flying insects often have two bug compound eyes, with many facets, called ommatidia; they also have three simple eyes, like these, on the top of their heads
- Bugscope Team the simple eyes are called 'ocelli'
- Bugscope Team the simple eyes help a fly keep track of where the sun is, so it does not get lost
- Teacher Why are there flakes of stuff here?
Bugscope Team the flakes are some kind of dried fluid on the surface of the head
- Bugscope Team all spiders feed by injecting venom into their prey. the venom dissolves the inner organs of the prey, and the spider sucks it all up like a milkshake
- Bugscope Team this is a small moth
- Bugscope Team see its compound eye?
- Bugscope Team it has lots of scales, which are what we feel when we stroke the wing of a moth or butterfly
- Bugscope Team the scales make the wing feel silky, and they are what seems to us to be fine powder coming off of the wings
- 2:21pm
- Bugscope Team scales have a number of purposes, and one is to fall off: when the moth flies into a spider web it may be able to leave some scales behind and get away
- Bugscope Team now we are looking at individual facets of the eye, called ommatidia
- Teacher what is the extra stuff on the eye?
Bugscope Team it is dirt, often; sometimes we see mold spores, and sometimes we see bacteria
- Bugscope Team hard to tell just what this is, isn't it?
- Teacher what do the smaller circles do?
- Bugscope Team we think they help collect the light that goes into the ommatidium, which is like a single lens
- Bugscope Team not all compound eyes have those very fine features
- Bugscope Team when you see them, you are imaging something on the nanoscale
- Bugscope Team they are only a few hundred nanometers in diameter
- Bugscope Team a few hundred billionths of a meter
- Bugscope Team see the micron scale at the lower left?
- 2:26pm
- Bugscope Team a micron, or micrometer, is 1000 nanometers, and it is one one thousandth of a millimeter
- Bugscope Team bacteria are usually about 2 micrometers long, so we can see them for sure when they are there
- Bugscope Team this is the base of the moth's antenna, which broke off
- Bugscope Team one of the antennae is another preset
- Bugscope Team you can see the tiny scales
- Teacher is it hollow?
Bugscope Team yes it is!
- Bugscope Team the antennae are used to pick up chemical scents in the air
- Bugscope Team some of those chemical scents are produced by other moths, and the male moth may want to follow them to find a female moth. they are like perfume'
- 2:31pm
- Teacher What is the reason for the texture on the antenna?
Bugscope Team part of the texture we see strengthens the antenna and makes it more rigid
- Teacher is that dirt on the claw?
Bugscope Team yes it is! but it is not always the beetle's fault. some of that may have showed up after the beetle died
- Bugscope Team when we look at the claw, and also the rest of the arm, we can often tell whether the beetle would be able to climb on a wall, or on glass, or walk on the ceiling
- Teacher what is the claw used for ?
Bugscope Team the claw is used kind of like we use our hands -- to grasp things and also to help it climb a bit
- Bugscope Team the setae we see now help the beetle tell whether or not something is touching it
- Teacher What are the hair like items here?
Bugscope Team they are mostly mechanosensors, like a cat's whiskers or a rat's whiskers
- Bugscope Team sometimes the hairlike items are self sensory -- so the insect can tell whether its arm or leg is bent too far in one direction
- Bugscope Team that little flake looks like a tiny scale from a moth
- Bugscope Team this is something I don't know much about at all -- this is the snakeskin you sent!
- 2:37pm
- Bugscope Team so you remember those big antennae we saw on the junebug?
- Bugscope Team these are the same kind, and here we can see inside the layers -- the lamellae
- Bugscope Team those little round things are called sensilla, and they are chemosensory, I believe -- they help the beetle taste the air
- Bugscope Team when we get really close the sensillae charge up with electrons
- Bugscope Team they are not well grounded
- Bugscope Team samples in a normal scanning electron microscope have to be conductive, and we coat them with a thin layer of gold-palladium so they do not charge up with electrons
- Bugscope Team now we can see a few palps, and we may see the tips of the mandibles, which are the jaws
- 2:42pm
- Bugscope Team see how the palps have flattened tips?
- Bugscope Team those flattened tips have chemosensors in them that let the beetle pre-taste its food; they're like tiny tastebuds
- Teacher what are the palps?
Bugscope Team palps are the four 'feelers' that are accessory mouthparts on many insects
- Bugscope Team they help taste food as well as move it toward the mouth
- Bugscope Team oh wow!
- Bugscope Team you found something cool!
- Bugscope Team what a surprise!
- Teacher Is this bacteria
- Bugscope Team they are too small to be bacteria
- Bugscope Team I am sorry -- I don't know what they are!
- Bugscope Team I think they are too small to be cocci, like streptococcus bacteria
- 2:47pm
- Bugscope Team they are less than a micron in diameter
- Bugscope Team a mystery today
- Bugscope Team this is one of the lamellated antennae
- Bugscope Team it is dirty too
- Bugscope Team if we cleaned the insects we get we might also clean the mites off them that we see sometimes
- Bugscope Team those are the joints of the antenna
- Bugscope Team they look like ant exoskeleton
- Teacher what is the coolest thing you saw on our samples?
Bugscope Team I liked the surprise, although I didn't recognize it. and I liked the placoid sensillae we saw inside the antenna lamellae
- Teacher One of the kids has asked what is one of strangest bugs you have every seen on the scope?
Bugscope Team I love weevils, which are really weird-looking. And whenever we get to see mites I am very excited.
- 2:52pm
- Bugscope Team once I found a mite that was molting, and it looked like it was taking its shirt off
- Bugscope Team it was slipping out of its old skin
- Bugscope Team but I shouldn't call it 'skin' -- it was the cuticle, or shell
- Bugscope Team we often see things we do not recognize, and when I talk with the entomologists I ask them lots of questions
- Bugscope Team this is some kind of juju on the antenna joint -- a dried fluid of some sort
- Teacher The kids say thank you! We greatly appreciate your time. It was another great session.
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team This is fun for us. And thank you for sending samples.
- Teacher For the future, what types of bugs would you recommend we collect?
Bugscope Team really small bugs are often cool. ants, antlions (those are wildlooking), mosquitoes, leafhoppers
- Bugscope Team ticks, which are not insects, are kind of cool to look at
- Bugscope Team but today was fun -- we got to see some cool stuff
- Bugscope Team to me, roaches and crickets and grasshoppers are often not that interesting
- 2:57pm
- Bugscope Team they are streamlined and don't have super cool features.
- Teacher I spend a lot of time in other labs and many engineers/techs wish they had your jobs. I get to look at Semiconductor samples, but this is some cool Stuff.
Bugscope Team we are really lucky to have all of these microscopes, and we get to see all kinds of samples: biological, materials, and biomaterials
- Teacher Thank you for the ideas. We have another session scheduled later with a 5th grade class.
Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Bugscope Team I hope the beetle is not making gang signs.
- Teacher Can I get images sent to me?
- Teacher I would like to print images from the session and give them to the kids.
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2011-093
- Bugscope Team this, below, is the link to today's session
- Bugscope Team http://itg.beckman.illinois.edu/~sjrobin/Bugscope Images/
- 3:02pm
- Teacher Are the images there immediately or in a few weeks?
Bugscope Team they are there now, with a transcipt of the session that has been anonymized.
- Bugscope Team the other link I sent is kind of messed up at the end but has some cool images
- Bugscope Team http://itg.beckman.illinois.edu/~sjrobin/MaggiesFarm/
- Bugscope Team Thank You!
- Guest Thank you! Was a great session.
Bugscope Team Thank you, Doris!
- Teacher Ok. Sounds great. Have a great afternoon. Thank you, Trevor Morgan - FEI
Bugscope Team Thanks, Trevor!
- Bugscope Team Noah are you still there?
- Bugscope Team I have someone to help on the TEM, but please let me know if you have any questions.
- Bugscope Team Noahsboat I just gave you control of the microscope. I will be back as soon as I get the TEM focused for someone.
