>>12160583it is a technical term for a mathematical operation.
in quantum mechanics we use something called a hilbert space, which is just a vector space that generalizes the 3-d euclidian space of classical geometry that you're used to, and we say that all [quantum mechanics] events can be mathematically described within this vector space.
in quantum mechanics a physical particle (like an electron or an atom or anything else that is small enough to be relevant) can be described by a mathematical function called the wave-function, which describes how this particle behaves with time (an analogue of a function in classical mechanics that describes the motion of something) and it is called that way because it represents the mathematical definition of a wave in general.
in any vector space there are objects called 'operators' which are vector space transformations that map elements from one vector space to another vector space, much like a function maps elements from one set to another.
in the hilbert space of quantum mechanics, an operator is also called an 'observable' and when a quantum mechanical operator (or an 'observable') acts on the wave-function of a particle, it physically represents the interaction that happens during measurement (like firing a laser, i.e., photons on an electron to establish its position), however, when this is done, an interesting thing happens in quantum mechanics, which is that this very act of measuring (or 'observing') changes the state of the particle (electron in this case) by interacting with it, and this is called the collapse of the wave function of the electron, it is called 'collapse' because the wave function is also a probabilistic function that describes all possible values or states that the particle could possibly attain, but when an operator acts on it it assumes only one of them.
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