Great answer! I'm still left wondering exactly what it is about the behaviour of an electron in the lowest orbit that is stopping it from getting closer to the

Great answer! I'm still left wondering exactly what it is about the behaviour of an electron in the lowest orbit that is stopping it from getting closer to the nucleus. Maybe even thinking of it as 'stopping' at all is my problem. Guess the standing-wave analogy below is actually pretty good for understanding that aspect and also accepting that it's a probability field, which does have nonzero values 'inside' the lowest orbital, so it can be 'found' (measured to be) closer in, just much less often. I'd guess having an intuition about why only the first orbital is spherical is probably part of understanding this all properly too, will keep-on reading!