When observed, the electrons act as matter, but when not observed, they act as waves?
Obviously “observed” doesn’t mean recorded on an iPhone camera, but what does it mean? Is it like if we simply know the location or the velocity of the electrons, they behave differently?
The part I’m most not understanding is why the electrons behave differently. Certainly they aren’t capable of thought and recognizing they’re being observed lol
In: Physics
This is one of those situations where a specific field (Physics in this case) comes across something new that it needs to reference, and it ends up re-using an existing word, and that creates a bunch of confusion for everyone else.
In this situation, the word “observed” doesn’t mean that it’s being watched by some sort of aware being. The word has a different meaning in this specific context.
That being said, this is a part of quantum mechanics that is definitely not well understood. It’s often referred to as “the measurement problem”, and there are a bunch of different theories as to how a quantum system ‘collapses’ into a more classical system. It’s not really the kind of thing that’s easy to ELI5, because it’s something that even experts in Quantum Mechanics can’t come to much consensus on.
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