Yeserbius: up until you said: “The sensors give off photons (or other equivalent sub-atomic particles) which interact with the wave, forcing it to stop being a wave and start being a particle.” you were correct. You are positing that there is a physical element to the observation that is causing the particle aspect of the photon to come into existence.
Unless my understanding of the implications of the experimental data are flawed, this is not the case. When the photon stream is being observed, those particles that have NOT interacted with anything will exhibit particle behavior and characteristics, not only the sampling of photons that have necessarily undergone interaction.
When the photon stream in general is not being observed then particle nature is not exhibited in the end result on the screen.
In other words, it would come out from the DS experiment that IF YOU COULD observe each photon with ZERO interaction or influence, ( say by some form of mental telepathy or time shifting) STILL the observer effect would be present in full.
It’s not a matter of being confusing to understand. It’s a matter of it not admitting to any rational understanding, as our rational understanding is today. That why physicists themselves have turned to “metaphysical nonsense” to explain it