title: What's the difference between '$(this)' and 'this'?
body: <p>I am currently working through this tutorial: <a href="http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:Getting_Started_with_jQuery" rel="noreferrer">Getting Started with jQuery</a></p>
  
  <p>For the two examples below:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$("#orderedlist").find("li").each(function (i) {
      $(this).append(" BAM! " + i);
  });
  $("#reset").click(function () {
      $("form").each(function () {
          this.reset();
      });
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Notice in the first example, we use <code>$(this)</code> to append some text inside of each <code>li</code> element. In the second example we use <code>this</code> directly when resetting the form.</p>
  
  <p><code>$(this)</code> seems to be used a lot more often than <code>this</code>.</p>
  
  <p>My guess is in the first example, <code>$()</code> is converting each <code>li</code> element into a jQuery object which understands the <code>append()</code> function whereas in the second example <code>reset()</code> can be called directly on the form.</p>
  
  <p>Basically we need <code>$()</code> for special jQuery-only functions.</p>
  
  <p>Is this correct?</p>