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It’s time to get high-tech with five fun and fascinating fast facts about artificial intelligence, an interview with Dr Lucy Andrew, a university lecturer who knows a lot about A.I. in education, and a short-term memory activity for you to try yourself at home.
Presented by Jenny Lynch and Matilda. Written and produced by Jenny Lynch. Music by Purple Planet Music. Sound effects by Pixabay.
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Episode content:
00:00 Sydney Fringe Festival 2026 show ‘Creative Science: Mind Blown’
00:23 Introduction and fast facts
05:55 Interview with Dr Lucy Andrew
11:20 Short-term memory activity
Dr Lucy Andrew: https://adelaide.edu.au/people/lucy.andrew
Lucy talking with her deep fake digital twin: https://adelaide.au.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=0c79267c-6da0-4a6d-89f9-b3d100452cc1
Short-term memory activity
You will need: A friend or family member to test, some paper and a pencil.
- Explain to your friend or family member that you are going to read out a list of ten words and they need to try to remember the list of words, in order, without writing them down.
- Read out this list of words (or make up your own list of ten words):
Apple, Monkey, Pencil, Bike, Clock, Cake, Tractor, Oven, Shoe, Tree - Challenge your friend or family member to write down the words in order. If they have any trouble writing or spelling the words, they can draw pictures instead.
How many words did they remember?
What’s happening?
This activity tests short-term memory and there is a limit to the number of words people can remember. For most people, the limit is between 6 and 8 words. If someone was to do this activity over and over again, they would probably get better at remembering the list of words, until they could write all ten words correctly. After enough practice, the list of words might even stay in their long-term memory.
Learning is an active process that takes some effort and it usually involves using our past experiences to make sense of new information. If someone needed to learn the list of ten words (for some strange reason) they could try using those words to write a story or maybe come up with a pattern or a poem to help them remember the order of the words. Doing this would help use their existing knowledge of what the words mean to make some sort of sense of an otherwise random order of the words.
