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The following is a list of difficulties that we came across in our experimentation. You might want to call these "bugs" in our system.
- In our quest to find leafhoppers, we came across a few problems. One major impediment was that we couldn?t find any. Class members brought in insects that they found around the school. Our first specimen was a grasshopper named Apoc. After the first day, the whereabouts of Apoc were, and presently remain, unknown.
- One class member brought in a large praying mantis. It?s a good thing we hadn?t caught any hoppers yet, because the mantis would have eaten them! The mantis was the first insect on which we tried our system. Unfortunately, it was half dead, and therefore very quiet.
- We received some advice from scientists regarding ways to catch leafhoppers. One suggestion involved using a vacuum to gather the insects off the ground. One student decided to try this out at home. After borrowing a dust-buster from the house, she proceeded to "dust-bust" her front lawn (failing to take into account of the fact that she was supposed to line the nozzle with a stocking). The vacuum method did yield a number of leafhoppers. However, all 20 were inconveniently laid to rest in the pile of dust that accumulated in the vacuum bag. Yet again we proved that dead bugs don?t talk.
- Finally we caught ONE leafhopper. We decided to test our recording chamber, a cup with a section cut out, with the help of our newly obtained insect. In order to prevent the insect from escaping, we blocked the hole with tape. Unfortunately, we did not realize that leafhoppers like adhesives. Within moments, the insect got his wings stuck to the tape. Our leafhopper gave one giant effort to remove his wings, and he did. He fell to the bottom of the recording chamber, wingless (and quiet).
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