system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: In quantum physics, why do particles react differently when being observed?

Thanks guys!  This is all really interesting stuff.
gpt
It's important to remember that what you normally think of as "observation" is not the same as how we usually "observe" tiny particles like photons. Most people relate "observation" to a passive act like watching, whereas in reality in order to observe the location of a photon we physically need to interact with it by bouncing things off of it.

Imagine being in a pitch black dark room with an empty tin can on the ground, and your job is to figure out where the can is using a tennis ball. Well, you can just throw the ball around until you hit the can. The problem is that now the can is somewhere else, since you just hit it with a tennis ball. So, all you know now is where the tin can WAS, since it's somewhere else now by the very nature of how we figured out its location.