Appending a DOM element twice (jQuery)

Question

Can someone explain why the following snippet does not add to both #a and #b?

HTML:

Answer 1

You can use the .clone() method to create a new instance to append to the DOM, since your current code just refers to the same instance twice.

$(function(){
    var $foo = $("HI");
    var $foo2 = foo.clone();
    $("#a").append($foo);
    $("#b").append($foo2);
});