I think I have a decent grasp on the dual-slit experiment, but I don’t know how the waveforms know when to collapse into a particle. Also, what counts as an observation and what doesn’t?
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You can’t observe something without interacting with it. Think about what it takes to “see” something. For something large, in order to see something you need light to bounce off of it, or in the case of echolocation you have sound bounce off of it. Well, that light or sound wave will exchange momentum and energy with the thing you are observing but that energy isn’t enough to actually change that thing. Similarly if you are observing light, the photon will come in and interact with your eyeball. The act of interacting with your eye will change that photon and it will either reflect in a different direction or be absorbed. You might think you are observing the light source but you are really just interacting with the photons it emits.
Quantum mechanically we are talking about things that are very small like a single particle or photon. If you shine a light on it then it will change it. If you direct it toward a particle director that also interacts with it and changes it. There is no way to observe a waveform without disturbing it and causing it to collapse.
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