Without freedom to inquire, the scientific enterprise would be ruled by intimidation rather than understanding through inquiry. If we don't help students develop sound investigative skills at a very early age, there is no reason to believe that students will be able to think critically and scientifically as they grow older. This approach was determined in the 1960's to be teaching good science by a project funded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They include obseruation, classification, inferring, predicting, measuring, communicating, interpreting data, making operational definitions, formulating questions and hypotheses, experimenting, and formulating models. Most of these eleven process skills are used and agreed upon by all science educators as desirable outcomes for learners of science.
All matter is composed of units called fundamental particles.
Matter exists in the form of units which can be classified into hierarchies of organizational levels. The behavior of matter in the universe can be described on a statistical basis, units of matter interact, and the basis of all ordinary interactions are either electromagnetic, gravitational, or nuclear forces. All interacting units of matter tend toward the equilibrium states in which energy content is a minimum and the energy distribution is most random, and the sum of energy and matter in the universe remains constant. One of the forms of energy is the motion of units of matter. All matter exists in time and space, and, since interactions occur among these units, matter is subject, in some degree, to changes with time.