Connected on 2013-01-24 18:00:00 from Ozaukee, Wisconsin, United States
- 5:02pm
- Bugscope Team venting the 'scope...
- Bugscope Team sample is in and pumping down
- Bugscope Team as soon as the vacuum is good enough, we'll make some adjustments and start finding presets
- 5:19pm
- 5:24pm
- Bugscope Team Hi Mikayla!
- Guest hi
- Bugscope Team where are you?
- Guest at haome
- Guest at home sorry
- Guest in Clermont, FL
- Bugscope Team Cool. We're setting up for a session at 6 our time, 7 your time. I'm making presets for that session.
- Bugscope Team let me know when you have questions.
- Guest awesome, thanks
- Bugscope Team except about this because I am not sure what it is; it is kind of like an ant or wasp but it's not...
- 5:30pm
- Bugscope Team it has some serious mandibles
- Bugscope Team and this is bacteria, on the eye
- Guest oh
- Bugscope Team a lot of bacteria and some debris
- Bugscope Team this is a piece of a butterfly wing
- Guest thats really interesting
- Bugscope Team the scales are what feels like powder, seems like powder, when you rub a butterfly or moth wing
- Guest cool
- 5:35pm
- Bugscope Team they're responsible for color, both pigmented and structural (due to the width of the lattice, etc. they refract light in different colors)
- Bugscope Team if your body was covered with scales like that and you flew into a spider web, there's a chance the scales would stick to the web but you could get away
- Bugscope Team silverfish have them too, and so do mosquitoes
- Guest would that harm the butterfly
Bugscope Team yes if the butterfly loses enough scales it cannot fly; they are also kind of like tiny feathers
- Bugscope Team this is a bunch of pollen from a lily
- 5:40pm
- Guest cool
- Bugscope Team this is the head of a cranefly, one of those flying insects that looks like a huge mosquito
- Bugscope Team the haltere, here has something on it, at the end, to the right
- 5:46pm
- Bugscope Team when the cranefly was alive the end of the haltere would have been more bulbous; it is now kind of dried out
- Bugscope Team flies have two wings and two halteres that beat opposite the beat of the wings and provide stability in the air
- Guest that is cool
- Bugscope Team this is a spiracle, which is what insects breathe through
- Teacher Hello is anyone there yet
- Guest this is all so interesting
- Bugscope Team Hey Jude
- Bugscope Team this is Scott, on three computers
- Bugscope Team and Mikayla
- Bugscope Team Mikayla is in Clermont, FL
- 5:51pm
- Teacher Cool. We are global.
- Bugscope Team also, Joe is on. He's an entomologist here.
- Guest ok
- Teacher I am here with 7 pre service teachers.
Bugscope Team do you have just one computer? can they log in?
- Teacher We share this with two computers right?
Bugscope Team you can have as many as maybe 25 computers without causing too much lag
- Bugscope Team we can confer control to anyone who'd like it, one at a time
- Bugscope Team presently you have control, Jude
- Bugscope Team but I'm at the SEM and can drive directly
- Teacher Sorry, I read the tutorial but don't recall how I give control over to others
Bugscope Team you just ask us. Joe can give you control, or I can.
- Bugscope Team this you can see did not work -- the fruitfly got covered with silver paint
- Bugscope Team these came out well, though
- Guest wow
- Student Hi everyone what a cool site!
- Bugscope Team Hi Kirst!
- 5:56pm
- Guest hi
- Bugscope Team Hello.
- Student what is the dark spot above the lower bug
Bugscope Team that is where the antennae are loose, and the area is charging up with electrons
- Student ooooo we like the eye...it looks fake!
- Student go closer on the eye
- Bugscope Team when a sample is not well coated with gold-palladium, from the sputter coater, it can charge up with electrons when the electron beam passes over it
- Student can you put it on the other bug?
Bugscope Team it's not gonna be so pretty...
- Bugscope Team those are the pedicels of the antennae
- Bugscope Team the bases, and they have an organ inside them that helps capture the vibrations from other flies
- Bugscope Team the branches parts of the antennae are called the aristate antennae
- Student do you have any of the insects we sent?
Bugscope Team I am sorry --- I don't know. Cate made the sample earlier, and I am not sure if she used your samples
- 6:02pm
- Student Is the stuff that looks like hair really hair?
Bugscope Team it's not really hair but it is convenient to call it hair. we call them 'setae' (see-tee)
- Student what is the purpose of the little tiny hairs?
Bugscope Team the tiny hairs are mostly for mechanosensing. since insects have an exoskeleton, they use these hairs to sense changings in the environment about them, particularly small movements in the air, or something closeby touching them.
Bugscope Team these hairs are called setae, (pronounced: see-tee)
- Bugscope Team Jude is it alright to give someone else control?
- Bugscope Team compound eyes also give the insects an advantage because they are very sensitive to changes in the visual field, as Joe said...
- Guest I am a guest
- Student Mikayla, are you a student, teacher, or part of the team?
Bugscope Team she is one of our friends from FL
- Teacher Yes, give others control
- Bugscope Team Kirst I just gave you control.
- Bugscope Team maybe Joe can tell us what this is
- Guest Is that why it is almost impossible to swat a fly?
Bugscope Team yea, that's one of the reasons. although it is possible once you learn that they tend to fly backwards a bit when they take off.
Bugscope Team they also have fairly good vision, that allows them to sense any sudden movements very well.
Bugscope Team sry, fly backwards when you are coming from the front. (the direction they takeoff in depends on the angle you're coming in at)
- Student what is this?
- Bugscope Team wow
- Bugscope Team ant?
- Bugscope Team i'd have to see the antennae more
- Bugscope Team here we see where the mandible attaches to the head, and we see the compound eye
- Bugscope Team it's not quite like an ant or wasp
- 6:07pm
- Bugscope Team this is some kind of borer
- Bugscope Team you can see its many-jointed forearm -- all of the tarsi
- Bugscope Team oooh is this a buprestid?
Bugscope Team I think so, not sure.
- Student are those teeth?
Bugscope Team they don't really have teeth, but sometimes the mandibles are hardened
- Student what are those 2 small white thingys?
Bugscope Team those are palps, one pair of palps
Bugscope Team these are used for tasting (gustatory senses)
- Bugscope Team palps are accessory mouthparts that help insects taste and also manipulate their food
- Student We all laughed!
- Student do you have lice or bed bugs?
Bugscope Team personally?
Bugscope Team not today, not in this sample
- Bugscope Team we've had bedbugs in the 'scope in the past, and also lice
- Bugscope Team thankfully none at home
- Student can you give Tim control? I'm computer shy...
Bugscope Team Tim is the Supreme Ruler
- 6:12pm
- Student can you tell by looking at different kinds of insects that bore what they bore into? (does that ? make sense?)
Bugscope Team yes, to a degree. the mouthparts often depend more on what order the particular insects belong to. but within an order, you can make pretty good guesses as to what their food/host may be.
- Student we're in trouble now!
Bugscope Team haha
- Student King of the ant hill!
Bugscope Team dude it means you have a lot of responsibility
- Student In our class too!
Bugscope Team really...
- Bugscope Team this is a true bug, not sure what kind
- Bugscope Team true bugs have piercing/sucking mouthparts
- Bugscope Team assassin bugs and ambush bugs have three-segmented probosces that stick into other bugs
- Student I thought so, sorry about my spelling
Bugscope Team we have more practice with those words, of course
- Student So Joe, what does this sample bore in to?
Bugscope Team probably wood. it's got pretty large/stout mandibles for a beetle
Bugscope Team and if it is a jewel beetle, then wood for sure.
- Student personally?
- Student Oops I phrased that wrong
- Student is that a mosquito then?
Bugscope Team mosquitoes are not true bugs; I didn't tell you the whole definition. mosquitoes are flies (mosca = fly and -ito = small)
- Student That wasn't an accident Kirsten!
- Student Sorry Mikayla.
- Student Do you have male or female genetaila that we can see?
Bugscope Team we can move to the tip of the abdomen of this or the buprestid
- 6:17pm
- Student So is this a boy or girl?
Bugscope Team not sure about this
- Student what are some of those differences?
- Bugscope Team when you see an earwig, the ones with bowlegged cercopods (the pincers) are males
- Bugscope Team female earwigs are more demure
- Bugscope Team often the genitalia are on the inside; often you cannot distinguish sexes, although we can tell you how to spot some differences
Bugscope Team yea, this is definitely true, sometimes they get bloated and the genitalia comes out, but not always
- Bugscope Team with houseflies and some other flies, the eyes of the males are close together, kind of like Mikhail Baryshnikov.
- Student ha
- Bugscope Team Female fly eyes are often farther apart, like Uma Thurman.
Bugscope Team lol
- Bugscope Team with spiders there is often a big disparity in size, and the males have these kind of boxing glove pedipalps compared to the female pedipalps, which are smaller
- Student You have used these jokes before
Bugscope Team sorry DaddyO
- Student do any have horse faces like Julia Roberts?
Bugscope Team cranefly
- 6:22pm
- Bugscope Team also, with moths and mosquitoes, the antennae are more frilly in the males
- Student are the pedipalps on the foot?
Bugscope Team they'e the palps on the head closest to the chelicerae, which hold the fangs
- Bugscope Team the boxing gloves in male spiders deliver sperm packets
- Bugscope Team this preset had moved a bit since we made it
- Bugscope Team see the bacilli?
- Teacher please give control cuw class ....thanks
- Student do you have any samples that would show a chelicerae, pedipalp, etc?
Bugscope Team let me see if I can find the spider; I'd forgotten about it
- Student I think is that what we see?
Bugscope Team it's actually almost all bacteria, not frass
- Bugscope Team can I drive for a sec?
- Student Sure
- Student yes please!
- Student Julie's drunk off jello shots so she shouldn't be driving anyway
- Bugscope Team haha sorry the spider is a disaster
- Bugscope Team wow
- Bugscope Team you can't see anything on this except legs
Bugscope Team exactically
- 6:28pm
- Bugscope Team well CU Class you can have the controls back now
- Student Do you use this same language with elementary students?
Bugscope Team we use the technical names for the features, yes
Bugscope Team but this is also accompanied by definitions in simpler terms
- Student How many computers can view at once?
Bugscope Team 25 to 30 before it starts to lag
- Bugscope Team the little indentations have setae in them, not sure why, but the indentations make the exoskeleton look shiny
- Student How long has this site been up?
Bugscope Team 14 years; we are older than Facebook, older than Google I think
- Student How much does it cost on your end to put on a session like this? Supplies and Time?
Bugscope Team yeah, time on the 'scope, sputtercoating, silver paint
- Bugscope Team when we started out we had a more primitive user interface
- Student what is the purpose of its ridges?
- Bugscope Team urticating means 'itching'
- 6:33pm
- Student Irritant???...sounds like my husband
Bugscope Team haha
- Student Do you work on the site as a volunteer?
Bugscope Team yea, this is mostly volunteer/outreach for us
- Bugscope Team I was hired to help start Bugscope at the end of 1998
- Bugscope Team spiders, some spiders, have what are called urticating hairs that they can release when, for example, a dog is sniffing them
Bugscope Team moths also have these, some of them are really bad
- Bugscope Team our first official session was March 19, 1999
- Student what is a spiracle?
Bugscope Team that is what insects breathe through; there are two on each segment, on either side, usually
- Student whats the best elementary question?
Bugscope Team kids always want to know what the hairs do, what the claws are for, about the same as big people
- Student What are some questions that usually arise when you do this with younger students?
Bugscope Team a lot of times they ask about the size of these things, and definitely function of different structures
- Student If scheduling a time with our students, how far in advance should we plan? How many sessions can we schedule in a day?
Bugscope Team we can schedule only two sessions per week because we share the 'scope with researchers. we also need an hour to set up, often a little less than that
- Student You guys are fun, would we always get you?
Bugscope Team I am almost always on.
Bugscope Team i try to be here often, but i have trouble waking up early, so....
- Student Yes!
- 6:38pm
- Bugscope Team we have connected with Australia, Ireland, Tanzania, Sri Lanka...
- Bugscope Team when we connect with adults we are sometimes a little more radical, but we want the kids to have fun
- Student If we wanted to use this in a class how far in advance do you need to know?
Bugscope Team it is good to plan at least a month in advance and sometimes more because we get busy
- Bugscope Team Thank you!
- Student Thanks a lot for the session! This is going to be a great tool to use with our future classes.
Bugscope Team you're welcome. this is pretty fun for us, and i think a really good resource for bringing technology otherwise no available to children
- Student how can we support you?
- Student How could we support you to maintain your site?
- Student Where do you get your funding?
- Student Chloe's mom always copies me...
- Bugscope Team we self fund; this is good publicity, at least we think it is, for the U of Illinois and for the Beckman Institute
- Student Sure newbie aka Kirst!
- Student Thank you. We had fun!!
- Bugscope Team we started with a grant from the NSF and several smaller grants from a variety of places, including the Lumpkin Foundation.
- Teacher Thank you for the session tonight and having good humor about the over tired adults in this classroom :0
- Student This session might not be good publicity
Bugscope Team haha it'll be fine
- Bugscope Team http://bugscope.beckman.illinois.edu/members/2012-133
- Bugscope Team thanks! see you all in the future.
- Teacher We really appreciate it. Please approve my next session....
Bugscope Team I think Kendra will take care of it.
- Teacher Thank you and good night.
- Teacher For sure I have requested a session for another college course.
Bugscope Team I think I saw it in email.
- 6:43pm
- Bugscope Team Thank You, Everyone!
- Bugscope Team over and out...
- Teacher Cool. Michelle Korb has asked us to participate in her research project.
- Teacher Night
- Bugscope Team night!
