Lists and Stories

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  What’s the Difference Between Rhythmic and Artistic Gymnastics? The Olympic Games features dozens of sports in its competitive lineup, including multiple disciplines of singular sports. For some of these disciplines, the differences between them are easy to spot—cycling road is obviously different from cycling track in the arena where the competitions are held....
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  What’s the Difference Between Seals and Sea Lions? Are seals and sea lions the same animal? Technically, they are in the same taxonomical suborder of pinnipeds (Pinnipedia), which comprises seals, sea lions, and walruses. But seals and sea lions are in different taxonomical families owing to some key anatomical differences. The most notable...
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  What’s the Difference Between Speed and Velocity? When describing the motion of objects in terms of distance, time, and direction, physicists use the basic quantities of speed and velocity. Two terms, two distinct meanings. Yet, not uncommonly, we hear these terms used interchangeably. So, what’s the difference? Why is it incorrect to use the...
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  What’s the Difference Between Sugar in Fruit and Sugar in Sweets and Candy? Sugar in fruit and sugar in processed foods are not the same. Fruits contain sugars known as fructose and glucose. When these sugars are combined, the result is sucrose (commonly called table sugar or white sugar). Sucrose occurs naturally in almost all plants but is especially abundant in...
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  What’s the Difference Between Sweet Potatoes and Yams? If you’re in the U.S., chances are that the “yams” you eat at Thanksgiving are actually sweet potatoes. Shocked? It’s true: yams and sweet potatoes are totally different plants and are not even closely related. In fact, these tasty starchy veggies are actually in two different plant families...
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  What’s the Difference Between Tempo and Rhythm? Regardless of whether you play a musical instrument, you probably know a little something about beat, melody, and harmony. But while many people are familiar with these terms, some still struggle to understand the difference between the most fundamental of musical elements—tempo and rhythm. In...
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  What’s the Difference Between the Deep Web and the Dark Web? When you think of the deep web, what comes to mind? Illegal activity? Phishing and scams? Bitcoins? Well, you’d be kind of right…and kind of wrong. These are examples of things found in the dark web, a collection of websites that have hidden IP addresses and may require a specific software to...
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  What’s the Difference Between Veins and Arteries? Veins and arteries are major players in the circulatory system of all vertebrates. They work together to transport blood throughout the body, helping to oxygenate and remove waste from every cell with each heartbeat. Arteries carry oxygenated blood from the heart, while veins carry oxygen-depleted...
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  What’s the Difference Between Venomous and Poisonous? When people talk about dangerous snakes like black mambas and cobras, at least one person in the conversation will ask whether the snake is poisonous. Bolstered by medical references and haphazard mentions on television and elsewhere in the mass media, the phrase “poisonous snake” has been drilled...
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  What’s the Difference Between Weather and Climate? Adding confusion to the politics of climate change and global warming in the press is the assumption that the terms weather and climate are at some level interchangeable. The two terms are confused with one another, presumably because the same elements (solar radiation, temperature, humidity, wind...
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  What’s the Difference Between Whiskey and Whisky? What About Scotch, Bourbon, and Rye? Have you ever heard the traditional folk song “Whiskey in the Jar”? Or is that “Whisky in the Jar”? Just what is the difference between “whiskey” and “whisky”? And while we are at it, how do Scotch, bourbon, and rye figure in all of this? First of all, they are all types of whiskey (or whisky—more...
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  When did women start wearing pants? In some cultures, pants have been common garments worn by women for centuries or millennia. This was not the case in much of Western society. In the United States, women typically wore long skirts, with the exception of some women who wore pantslike garments to perform work or engage in sports....
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  When Does Summer Start? Many climate scientists define the start of summer in terms of meteorological phenomena and the calendar year. They claim that the meteorological summer season starts on June 1 and lasts three months, until September 1. Other people define the beginning of summer in academic terms—as the end of the...
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  When Dylan “Went Electric” Bob Dylan’s performance at the Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival in 1965 is widely regarded as one of the pivotal moments in the history of rock music. But if there is near consensus on its importance, there is much less agreement on exactly what happened. Rock historians, Dylan’s biographers,...
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  When Katrina Struck Between August 23 and 29, 2005, a tropical depression called “Katrina” grew into one of the most destructive storms in American history. After crossing the southern tip of Florida as a tropical storm, Katrina was invigorated by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which bloated it into a category...
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  When the “Hannibal of the Andes” Liberated Chile One of the most-dramatic chapters in the 19th-century struggle for Latin American independence from Spanish rule occurred 200 years ago, in January and February 1817, when the liberation of Chile was won by the improbable crossing of the Andes Mountains by a force of revolutionaries under the...
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  When Was the Last Pandemic? This article was originally published on March 19, 2020. The last major global outbreak of disease before the COVID-19 pandemic declared in 2020 was the influenza pandemic (H1N1) of 2009. The H1N1 outbreak was the first pandemic of the 21st century. The disease was initially detected in February...
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  When Was the Periodic Table Invented? The periodic table was invented by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. However, prior to Mendeleev, chemists had been pondering for decades how to classify the elements. Beginning in 1789, Antoine Lavoisier began classifying elements by their properties. Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner showed in...
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  When Were the First GMOs Developed? While plant breeding and animal breeding have existed for many, many millennia, the ability to create a genetically modified organism (GMO) depends on sophisticated DNA technologies that were created only in the second half of the 20th century and continue to improve. Indeed, many GMOs contain...
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  Where Did the -stan Country Name Suffix Come From? Some countries in southern and central Asia and some of Russia’s republics have names that end in the suffix -stan. If you aren’t from Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, or elsewhere in the region, you may be wondering where this suffix comes from and what it means. The -stan suffix, and also sta...