Living organisms need both matter and free energy to function and survive. Here's a breakdown:

Matter:

• Living things are made up of matter, the physical stuff that forms their bodies, tissues, and organs.
• They require various elements and compounds like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and calcium to build these structures.
• They obtain these elements from their environment through various means, like plants absorbing nutrients from the soil and animals consuming other organisms.

Free Energy:

• Living organisms need energy to perform all their biological processes, from growth and movement to reproduction and repair.
• This energy comes from the breakdown of molecules containing free energy.
• Free energy is the usable energy available in a system to do work.
• Plants capture sunlight, which is the primary source of free energy for most ecosystems, and convert it into usable energy through photosynthesis. Animals get their free energy by consuming plants or other animals.

Matter vs. Energy Flow:

• Matter cycles through an ecosystem:Plants (producers) take in inorganic nutrients and use them to build organic matter. Consumers (herbivores, carnivores) eat the producers and other consumers, incorporating that matter into their bodies. Decomposers break down dead organisms and waste products, returning the nutrients back to the soil and atmosphere for producers to use again.
• Energy flows through an ecosystem in a one-way direction:Sunlight enters the system and is captured by plants through photosynthesis. As consumers eat plants and other consumers, the energy gets transferred, but some usable energy is lost as heat at each level due to cellular respiration. This lost energy cannot be recovered by the ecosystem.

Here's an analogy: Think of matter like Legos. You can build different structures (organisms) with the same Legos (atoms). But the energy used to put those Legos together (sunlight) is gradually used up and cannot be reused in the same way.

Dr Murtadha Shukur thank you for your contribution to the discussion

Living organisms must take in energy via food, nutrients, or sunlight in order to carry out cellular processes. The transport, synthesis, and breakdown of nutrients and molecules in a cell require the use of energy. Organisms use free energy for many other things, such as growth and reproduction. As body's temperature and metabolism depend on you taking in free energy and matter. It also takes a lot of energy to produce and rear offspring. Inside every cell of all living things, energy is needed to carry out life processes. Energy is required to break down and build up molecules, and to transport many molecules across plasma membranes. All of life's work needs energy. Organisms need both matter and energy to carry out life processes. A producer is an organism that uses energy and matter from the environment to make its own food molecules. Food provides animals with the materials and energy they need for body repair, growth, warmth, and motion. Plants acquire material for growth chiefly from air, water, and process matter and obtain energy from sunlight, which is used to maintain conditions necessary for survival. So, the energy that enters an ecosystem as sunlight eventually flows out of the ecosystem in the form of heat. In contrast, the matter in an ecosystem is continuously recycled as atoms are combined and recombined in different ways. Unlike the one-way flow of energy, matter is recycled within and between ecosystems. Elements pass from one organism to another and among parts of the biosphere through closed loops called biogeochemical cycles, which are powered by the flow of energy. Energy is transferred between organisms in food webs from producers to consumers. The energy is used by organisms to carry out complex tasks. The vast majority of energy that exists in food webs originates from the sun and is converted (transformed) into chemical energy by the process of photosynthesis in plants. As energy moves through an ecosystem, it changes form, but no new energy is created. Similarly, as matter cycles within an ecosystem, atoms are rearranged into various molecules, but no new matter is created. When one organism eats another, the matter, or carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements, are transferred from one to the other. These elements move from the producers, to the consumers, and eventually to the decomposers, cycling the matter through the ecosystem. Matter cycles within ecosystems and can be traced from organism to organism. Plants use energy from the Sun to change air and water into matter needed for growth. Animals and decomposers consume matter for their life functions, continuing the cycling of matter.