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

basically an ‘observation’ somehow interacts with the system, and this interaction causes the collapse

there are 5 interpretations (basically disagreements on what counts as an ‘observation’ and how the ‘observation’ causes the collapse) – it goes a little beyond ELI5 for the explanation though

basically we know that observing a system requires interaction and that this results in a waveform collapse, but there is disagreement (Many-worlds theory) about if the collapse actually happens