Final answer:
Matter is essential for both living and nonliving things, providing the substance for growth, energy, and maintaining ecosystems. In living organisms, it's crucial for cellular construction and energy processes, while in nonliving things, it undergoes changes vital to life.
Step-by-step explanation:
The role of matter is fundamental in both living and nonliving things, as it occupies space and has mass. Organisms use matter both materially, as the substance to grow and build themselves, and energetically, as a source for the energy needed in life's processes. In living things, growth requires the acquisition of matter to construct new cells and tissues, while energy is derived from the rearrangement of matter during metabolic processes such as respiration, that converts carbohydrates and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water without converting matter into energy. Nonliving things, such as air, water, and minerals, also consist of matter and can undergo physical and chemical changes that are essential to life, like providing nutrients for organisms.
Energy transformations and the manipulation of matter are key activities of life, abiding by the laws of chemistry and physics. In an ecosystem, both nonliving and living components are made of matter and interact intricately, flowing energy between them without matter-energy conversion. Various chemical elements form molecules which are the building blocks of cellular structures, whereby cells are essentially the smallest units of life, each running on chemical energy primarily derived from carbohydrates. Photosynthesis is a crucial process where certain organisms convert solar energy into the chemical energy needed for growth and survival.