I was told this idea works for any sign of the source charge: in any potential, a positive test charge will always naturally move towards a lower potential and a negative test charge towards a higher potential.
I can kind of understand why a positive charge would move towards the region of lower potential (because don’t things in general want to do that? but if the source charge doesn’t matter, I’m just confused).
Can someone explain like I’m stupid why a negative charge would move towards higher potential?
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I suspect that the word “potential” is messing you up. It’s really not important. What IS important is that positively charged things tend to move in the direction of negatively charged things, and vice versa. If particle A is less positively charged than particle B, then they will be attracted to each other, even though both are “positive”. It’s all relative.
When we talk about electric field potential, it’s just describing the spatial distribution of charges. More positive (less negative) thisaway, more negative (less positive) thataway.
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