Okay ima given you my amateur explanation.

You know how light and other particles just do their thing?

We perceive light as a wave, e.g. light energy coming from the sun and going szzchoop to earth.

However smarty pants didn’t think that quite tracked, it was sus to say the least.

So they measured it and they accomplished this by shining light (a laser) through slits in a card.

Their understanding was that if light was a wave (like most energy and for example real life waves like water waves) then they’d proceed to see detection readings of the light particles in a specific pattern similar to water passing through a flood gate with two holes in it (similar to the first picture of the meme).

BUT THEH DIDNT (omg no way wtf physics revisionism)

Instead they found that the behaviour of tiny particles of light behave more like particles of sub atomic vibes. This gave the scientists the bottom picture or reading on the meme.

Essentially the same reading you’d expect if you fired bullets from a mini gun at two holes in a wall. You’d only get bullets passing through the two holes and breaking bullet holes in two spots on the wall at the back.

However if you measure light as a wave then it ripples and spreads out like water, giving us the reading at the top of the picture.

Essentially light was taking the piss and it baffled physicists till we realised that particles only operate how we think when we measure them. The very act of measuring them defines their movement. If we don’t measure them they do what they like (queen girl boss energy) but when the patriarchy (smh 😤) looks at them, they behave like the patriarchy expects.

The gag is that when the puppet observes light it acts like when physicists observe light, it behaves, but when physicists don’t look (shy boys) light can be its sapphic self.

Essentially the act of observing is the act of measuring which in turn impacts the interaction with these cheeky bastards and gives us the readings we percieve as monkeys.

Hence the joke is when the puppet observes light it acts like a particle (behaved) but when we don’t it acts like a wave (beautiful waves of water).

The experiment at gcse/a-level (so high school for amerikkkans) is to illustrate this affect and the insanity of quantum physics to fuck over all the budding students who think they get it.

At uni and beyond that I’m ignorant af of as I specialised in biology and my knowledge is surface level at best for an A-level student (even then I don’t think I remember it well cos its fucking wacky).

Has that helped? I could be wrong ngl but until someone corrects my stupidity that’s how I remember it.