Which of the following is a characteristic of durable scientific knowledge?
a it remains unchanged over time
b it is rarely subjected to examination
c several scientists' investigations support it
d similar investigations yield dissimilar results.

the atomic number will stay the same no matter how many electrons it has, so it doesn’t decrease nor increase. it’ll only change with a different number of protons

a. energy is absorbed in the reaction.

if in a given reaction the energy of products is greater than the energy of reactants it means that reaction is endothermic and during the reaction, the energy is absorbed by reactants. in an endothermic reaction, the products have more stored chemical energy than the reactants. and in this reaction the reactants are more stable than products before the compounds with less energy are always more stable.