Short reads vs long reads with regards to break points My professor in class said the following statements. 


Short reads can map break points
Long reads can disambiguate repeat related issues


I'm very new to genomics, so I don't quite understand the first statement. What is meant by short reads can map break points. What are break points to begin with?
A "break point" typically denotes one end of a structural variation, such as an inversion or deletion. You can simply think of it as the position where the normal chromosome was broken to allow the variation. One can find these with short (Illumina) reads relatively easily since with paired end sequencing you'll have pairs spanning these breakpoints with odd relative orientations or insert sizes or such. Note that this is not a particular strength of short reads, since long reads are probably even better at this (they are not as good for finding SNPs at the moment though).