What are wavefunctions?

A wavefunction is like a special map that tells us where something might be and what it might be doing at any moment.

Imagine you have a toy car that can drive around your room, but sometimes it’s fast, sometimes slow, and sometimes it even disappears for a bit before showing up somewhere else. A wavefunction is like the invisible directions this toy car follows, it doesn’t tell us exactly where the car will be next, just all the possible places it could be and how likely each one is.

Think of a wavefunction as a blanket made of many layers. Each layer shows different possibilities: maybe in one layer the toy car is near your bed, in another it’s by the door, and in yet another it's floating in the air like a ghost. The more layers there are, the more places the toy car could be, just like how a thick blanket keeps you warm with many soft layers.

When we look at the toy car, it picks one place to be, but before we look, it’s like it's wearing all those layers at once!