I should begin by saying that I am a total newbie when it comes to Quantum Mechanics. Therefore my question might sound metaphysical to people who know their stuff. So please forgive.
What I am trying to understand is the basic system of an electron in a box. Suppose I place a detector at a fixed point inside and try to detect the presence of an electron. There are two possibilities:
(1) The detector detects an electron. The Copenhagen interpretation explains this by saying that the act of measurement forced the wave function to collapse at that point.
(2) The detector did not detect anything. Would this "not detecting an electron" qualify as a true measurement in the Copenhagen sense? I mean, if this qualified as a measurement would it change the wave function?
What led me to this confusion is the explanation in Griffiths' Quantum Mechanics. He states that the same experiment when done soon after possibility (1) gives us the same result i.e, observe the electron (which does not confuse me.) But what happens when you do the experiment soon after possibility (2)? Would I still not observe the electron?
What if I extend this to the two-slit experiment and place the detector at only one slit. If I didn't observe the electron, it means that it passed through the other hole, which doesn't lead to the pattern. So again, does this make "not detecting the electron" a true observation which collapses the wave function?