The Questions That Changed Everything

Lexile: 810 | Grade: 4

Passage

Long ago, people looked at the world and asked big questions: Why do apples fall? Why do planets move? Why doesn’t the moon crash into the Earth? These questions didn’t have easy answers—but they mattered. They were the beginning of science.

One of the people who asked these questions was a young thinker named Isaac Newton. In the 1600s, he watched an apple fall from a tree and wondered—not just that it fell, but *why*. What invisible force made it fall? And could that same force reach the moon?

Newton didn’t have computers or space tools. He only had his mind, his notebooks, and his curiosity. He studied the sky, ran experiments, and used math to explain what he saw. His big idea? Gravity. A force that pulls objects toward each other. It helped explain why apples fall, why the Earth orbits the sun, and why we don’t float away.

But Newton’s real power wasn’t just discovering gravity—it was choosing to keep asking, even when answers were slow. He showed that science begins with wonder, grows with questions, and becomes powerful through persistence.

Even today, scientists build on Newton’s ideas to send rockets to space, explore other planets, and understand how the universe works. It all began with a question—and the courage to follow where it led.