>>11211202Since nobody gave you a good answer let me break it down for you. First of all we need to unlearn some of the learned classical notions that you are harboring namely that everything is exclusively a wave or a particle. One of the foundations of QM is that a particle can exhibit behavior that satisfies wave like behavior or particle like behavior depending upon the experiment you perform. You can only do one of those experiments at a given time and so you will exclusively see one behavior for the particle. This is why we are reluctant in calling an electron a particle or a wave. More appropriately it is a quantum object that has an undefined classical trajectory, and you can only talk about probabilities of each trajectory between two points. In other words, an electron will take every possible path between two points but upon measurement, some paths will have an overwhelming majority compared to some convoluted path that makes a round trip across the detector. Till now there is no need for a consciousness to break the electron into something. It always was the way it was. But depending upon the experiment you ask of it, it will reply with an answer that is appropriate. I don't know if I can dumb it down anymore but feel free to ask questions.
Consciousness itself is a non-trivial process and a part of the system. We don't understand enough about the act of observation to tell you what it means and whether it has an effect on the particle being measured. Most probability and likely, there is some effect but it is hard to quantify it for now and most science is better off simplifying calculations like in high school you'd eliminate air friction when computing a parabolic path or something alike.
