First - Neutrons, protons and electrons all act as both particles and waves. They can be particles, moving in distinct pathways or orbits, or they can be waves, being more diffused. This ability to become either, to be suspended between both states, is known as a potential.
Second - Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - Basically, nothing is certain until it is observed. Take a senior high school physics experiment for an example: if you get a double slit paper like below,
And fire a paintball gun at it, the bullets should spatter the surface behind the double slit paper in a pattern like this, which is the pattern a particle would make.
But, if you shine a torchlight through the slits, the light will diffract to show a pattern like this (Light is a form of electromagnetic wave).
Now, if you take an electron gun and fire it through the double slit to a phosphorescent surface, what you'd get is the pattern of the waves. Imagine, electrons traveling as waves. After this, if you place a clicker that beeps whenever it detects the passage of a electron, and switch on the electron gun again, the diffraction pattern immediately switches to that of the particles. It does not work in a larger world, but it does when it comes to subatomics.Third - As shown in the Heisenberg experiment above, the way to collapse the potential to one side or the other is to measure it. The electrons, once measured by quantity passing through the double slits, immediately changed from waves to particles. And the act of observing and measuring is carried out by the environment.
The subatomic particles in the universe, in our body, even, are constantly under measurement from the environment - that's why we remain, well, us.
