Hmmm if you are going to that point. Then you would also have to say it would collapse any other states.
This is that photon collapse thing again, before the localizing measurement you can conceptually imagine an "expanding sphere" but once you localize the photon the sphere disappears. You are basically going to have the exact same thing in your case as you localize the electron in the atom.
This is the hard part people struggle with they want to make the atom discrete (something like a planet model) and unchanging like we see the world. The problem is the same as you the chair and the universe, at this micro level the universe is a lot different to what we see. Probably the best way to describe it is the atom is actually oscillating between various states as it fights for stability.
So if you collapse and measure the electron you can't tell anything about the vibrating states because you just stopped it ... you had the same problem with the single photon wave remember.
At a quantum level the fields seem able to "explore" (not sure what other word to use here) the options open to it as the fields don't seem to have the property of exact localization to our world until measured, your photon sphere wave was illustration of that. So that gives you the properties of superposition/entanglement that really defines QM.
You sort of see that most when you look at Quantum walking
http://phys.org/news/2012-03-pulses-quantum.htmlIf you read the article you may sort of get the feel for how that is working which is why, when you apply classical physics to the experiment it makes no sense.
