Memory Tray: how many of 10 objects can your brain hold?
Grab 10 small objects — spoon, coin, pen, LEGO, key, anything. Lay them on the table.
Everyone studies them in silence for exactly 20 seconds. No touching, no pointing.
Cover them with a towel. Now write down every object you remember — that's Worksheet Q1.
Round 2: peek for 15 seconds again, but this time group the 10 into 3 squads (things that go together). Cover, recall, count — Q2.
Q3: which round scored higher — 1 flat list of 10, or 3 groups? Defend your answer.
The flat list loses — your brain wants 3 groups, not 10 items
Your working memory — the mental notepad that holds what you're thinking about right now — can only hold about 4 chunks at once. Ten loose objects = ten chunks. Way over budget. Three squads = three chunks. Comfortably under.
This is chunking, and it's why phone numbers come as 3 blocks instead of one 10-digit monster. The phone companies cracked this decades ago; your brain just forgot to read the memo.
Scores Q2 > Q1? That's not luck — that's better-organised software running on the same hardware.