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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That’s one of the fundamental questions of quantum mechanics. To keep it simple, we don’t know. There’s different hypothesis and interpretations about »wave function collapse«. That’s the phrase for the thing you’re describing.
You’re probably familiar with the Many Worlds interpretation where the collapse simply doesn’t happen and instead, both slits are passed in different realities that can’t influence each other anymore.
Another hypothesis is pilot wave theory. For the latter, I can’t really break this down in simple terms.
In any case, I would highly recommend checking out the YouTube channel »PBS Space Time«. Their most recent video is exactly on this topic. And they did many more on that subject, even on bleeding edge research papers. Again, highly recommend them and sorry for the next few hours taken away from you by recommending them 😀
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