What IS Evolution?

Because so much change happens during evolution, I feel like my definition of evolution also gets updated based on new concepts and ideas we have talked about thus far in this class. So far, Evolution in my own words is a biological process where a specific species' genome alters to where that new alteration can be then passed down to future generations. While a lot of people believe that evolution would always like to modify the species to better their lifestyle and survival rate, we can see that not all evolutional traits are beneficial. Some are indifferent to the species and some can be unbeneficial and potential cause the species harm. An example of an indifferent evolutional trait is the purpose of our appendix. I'm not sure what is (or if there ever was) a purpose for the human race to develop these tissues but somewhere along the line, we did even though there is no current useful purpose for it. Also, I think it's important to include that for many species, the evolutional process takes a long time. For some, it can take many generations. But for some bacterial species that regenerate in seconds, evolution can occur within that same day. Sometimes when people discuss the topic of evolution, the phrase "survival of the fittest" comes to mind. For some evolving species, this quote applies but it should not be considered a consistent factor of evolution because as I mentioned before, not all evolution is beneficial. 

A lot of debate can go behind the idea of evolution being a fact or theory. To me, I believe that it's a theory simply because it's not a concept that is a set-in-stone fact for every individual case. While we do have evidence that evolution is a real concept, the entirety of this category is so much broader than that. Examples of facts include that velocity is equal to distance over time and that organisms derive from cells made up of molecules. Evolution does contain some facts such as in order for change to occur in a species, there has to be some kind of biological modification and it has to be inherited. But because there is so many tests and studies that scientists are still envoking on the theory of evolution, it is not broadly a fact.