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First of all, before anyone gets mad: We do not know. You could say that it just turned out that way, but in nature things tend toward their minimum states of energy;you simply MUST accept this axiom(think about particle excitement and the ground state). For a charged particle the Potential energy equation is : Energy(potential)=(kqQ)/r, where k is Coulomb's constant, and r is the distance between the charges. So,since an electron's charge is negative, a greater distance would yield a larger potential energy value ("that's something even your grandmother could see"(Michio Kaku, but he was talking about gravitational lensing)). Since we said that in nature, particles tend toward their lowest states of energy (once again think of gamma decay, or something of the sort), it would make no sense for an electron to travel away from a region that causes it to have lower energy state. Consequently, electrons move toward the region of a lower state of energy. *Your next question should be: Why things in nature tend toward their lowest states of energy. I will answer that as well: ***It has to do with the principle of "Minimum total potential energy," which states that in nature, structures tend towards their lowest states of potential energy(I guess I didn't even have to say that ha...). The reasoning for this is intuitive if one considers the second law of thermodynamics, which states that in nature, things tend toward their equilibrium, where entropy is at a maximum. In layman's terms, if something is cold it is in a state of low entropy, and if something is hot is in a high state of entropy. Thus, if something has a higher heat content, it has a lower potential energy, and since things tend toward maximum entropy, we can reason that things tend toward low energies as well. For example, an electron and a proton will combine to form a neutral hydrogen atom, which has less charge than the individual particles (even if they are infinitely far away). So, if this applies even at infinite distances, then every particle is connected in this way, and they will all tend toward their lowest states of energy.