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I'd read a piece that even just having a camera present has the same effect.
That's not really it. You need something that measures the state of the electron. Merely looking in the direction is not enough. It has to be something that interacts with the electron.
A camera alone isn't enough. But light (eg photons) with enough energy should be enough. But then that energy will manipulate the electron. If you had a completely dark room and pointed a camera at the experiment it wouldn't change anything.
It's kind of like having your cake and eating it too.
Yeah, it turns out that slapping the electron around like with a big stick or whatever causes it to change its behavior, go figure! :-P
Dammit Jim, I'm a psychologist, not a physicist!
So if we didn't need light to see it then it would continue doing whatever it does?
I wonder how the universe would look if we didn't need light to see 🤔
but light is seeing.
It isn't "looking" that is meant by "observation". "Observation" is meant to convey the idea that something (not necessarily sentient) is in some way interacting with an object in question such that the state(s) of the object affects the state(s) of the "observer" (and vice versa).
The word is rather misleading in that it might give the impression of a unidirectional type of interaction when it really is the establishment of a bidirectional relationship. The reason one says "I observe the electron" rather than "I am observed by the electron" is that we don't typically attribute agency to electrons the way we do humans (for good reasons), but they are equally true.
Edit: a way of putting it is that the electron can only be said to be in a particular state if it matters in any way to the state of whomever says it. If I want to know what state an electon is in, it must appear to me in some state in order for me to get an answer. If I never interact with it, I can't possibly get such an answer and the electron then behaves as if it was actually in more than one state at once, and all those states interfere with each other, and that looks like wavelike patterns in certain measurements.
Edit 2: just to be clear, I used an electron as an example, but it's exactly the same for anything else we know of. Photons, bicycles, protons, and elephants are all like this, too. It's just that the more fundamental particles you involve and the more you already know about many of them, the fewer the possible answers are for any measurement you could make.
So you're telling me the people from The Secret lied to me?!
I have no idea what that is so I'll just go with yes, probably!
No, the electron only understands sentient thoughts, if a camera or an animal looks at it, it won't work.
Well that's not right
Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena by a detector or an instrument can change the measured results of this experiment. Despite the "observer effect" in the double-slit experiment being caused by the presence of an electronic detector, the experiment's results have been interpreted by some to suggest that a conscious mind can directly affect reality.[3] However, the need for the "observer" to be conscious (versus merely existent, as in a unicellular microorganism) is not supported by scientific research, and has been pointed out as a misconception rooted in a poor understanding of the quantum wave function ψ and the quantum measurement process.[4][5][6]>
I suspect it was a joke. Can't be sure though.
I'm pretty confident it's a joke, but clearly from other comments people may actually believe something like that. It's best someone corrects it, even if not for the sake of the poster.
Not just sentient, but intelligent thought. I proved it in university. When I setup the lab, I got no interference pattern. When my more intelligent labmate did the setup there were fringes.
Wait! That means I was the sentient one! I was cheated! (Or maybe I just sucked at lab.)