Collapse of the wavefunction

Imagine you have a toy car. When you push it, it moves in a straight line until it hits something, like a wall or a chair. When it hits something, it stops moving as fast and might even change direction.

Now imagine a tiny particle, like an atom. Instead of moving in a straight line, it moves all over the place, kind of like the toy car bouncing around. Scientists call this movement a "wavefunction."

But here's the weird part: when we try to measure where the particle is, it suddenly stops moving around and is in one specific spot. It's like the toy car hitting the wall and stopping.

This is what scientists call the "collapse of the wavefunction." It means that the particle goes from moving around all over the place and being in multiple places at once to being in just one spot.

We don't really understand why this happens, but it's the way the world works at the tiniest level. It's what makes our universe so strange and interesting.