Why don't protons attract electron?
1 Answer
Electrons have a wave character, so their distance from the nucleus is determined to be specific values of wavelength (but not zero).
Explanation:
Electrons are not really the little mini snooker balls that we see in school text books. They have a wave/particle duality, in other words they exhibit some properties best modeled by treating them as waves, and other properties best modeled by treating them as particles.
Electrons treated as waves can be imagined as standing waves inside a container. And standing waves can only exist at specific wavelengths, similarly electrons can only exist at specific wavelengths, so their distance from the nucleus (which contains the protons) can be at certain specific values but it cannot be "zero".
So you can get electrons pretty close to the proton containing nucleus (which is what atoms are, basically electrons attracted to a proton containing nucleus) but the distance away from it is predefined to specific values.
