Meth and Menthol are not the same

Today's misunderstanding is brought to you by this story from the New York times. We read it today during my newspaper class. It's a story about weird mini-earthquakes happening in the town of Clintonville, WI. At least, that's what they think they might be. 


Since they're not quite sure, the towns people thought it could be many different things, "Other hypotheses include meth labs, sinkholes, underground rivers and even a corporate conspiracy to drive home prices down," the article reads. 

We were talking about the 11 parts of the newspaper story -- something I came up with to help showcase the difference between language arts writing and journalistic writing. Based on that sentence, one of my students asked:

"What's meth?"

The class laughed. Apparently, they knew what it was. 

"It's a drug," I said.

"Isn't it in NyQuil?"

"No, that's menthol," I said.

"Same thing."

"No, it's not," I said. "Menthol is like mint, whereas meth is an illegal drug."