how do waveforms know they’re being observed?

Question

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?

In: 8

Answer 1

I’ve always felt like observation is poor wording for what’s actually going on. In reality, it’s the action of interacting with something else that which collapses the wave form. This happens whether or not “observes” it. It’s just that for us to make an observation, we need it to interact with something else. It’s that interaction that collapses the wave function. No observer necessary.