Can someone help my understanding of nth-child with jQuery?

I’ve followed through all the jQuery stuff fine so far but I just can’t wrap my head around the nth-child function.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the way it works is that it finds the element with the target specified, then finds the nth child of that targets parent.

The code I’ve added at the bottom is for the completed lesson so it should all be correct.

I played around with it to try and get a better understanding of it but sometimes I’d hit a wall expecting something to happen but nothing does.

For example if I delete the target class from buttons 3 and 6 to have this:

  $(document).ready(function() {
    $("#target1").css("color", "red");
    $("#target1").prop("disabled", true);
    $("#target4").remove();
    $("#target2").appendTo("#right-well");
    $("#target5").clone().appendTo("#left-well");
    $("#target1").parent().css("background-color", "red");
    $("#right-well").children().css("color", "orange");
    $(".target:nth-child(2)").addClass("animated bounce");

  });
</script>

<!-- Only change code above this line. -->

<div class="container-fluid">
  <h3 class="text-primary text-center">jQuery Playground</h3>
  <div class="row">
    <div class="col-xs-6">
      <h4>#left-well</h4>
      <div class="well" id="left-well">
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target1">#target1</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target2">#target2</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default" id="target3">#target3</button>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="col-xs-6">
      <h4>#right-well</h4>
      <div class="well" id="right-well">
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target4">#target4</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target5">#target5</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default" id="target6">#target6</button>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

I’d expect the code to still work and for the 2nd button (2nd child) to shake but it doesn’t. However, if I change the target to select the 1st child it does work and it shakes the top button as expected.

Also, if I delete the target class for the top button, and target the 1st child,

  $(document).ready(function() {
    $("#target1").css("color", "red");
    $("#target1").prop("disabled", true);
    $("#target4").remove();
    $("#target2").appendTo("#right-well");
    $("#target5").clone().appendTo("#left-well");
    $("#target1").parent().css("background-color", "red");
    $("#right-well").children().css("color", "orange");
    $(".target:nth-child(1)").addClass("animated bounce");

  });
</script>

<!-- Only change code above this line. -->

<div class="container-fluid">
  <h3 class="text-primary text-center">jQuery Playground</h3>
  <div class="row">
    <div class="col-xs-6">
      <h4>#left-well</h4>
      <div class="well" id="left-well">
        <button class="btn btn-default" id="target1">#target1</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target2">#target2</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target3">#target3</button>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="col-xs-6">
      <h4>#right-well</h4>
      <div class="well" id="right-well">
        <button class="btn btn-default" id="target4">#target4</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target5">#target5</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target6">#target6</button>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

I’m now expecting the middle button to shake, as that is now the first child with the target class, but nothing is happening. Is this understanding correct?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, feel free to ask anymore questions and I’m sorry if I’ve used any wrong terminology, I am very new to this.

Correct code for lesson completion

  $(document).ready(function() {
    $("#target1").css("color", "red");
    $("#target1").prop("disabled", true);
    $("#target4").remove();
    $("#target2").appendTo("#right-well");
    $("#target5").clone().appendTo("#left-well");
    $("#target1").parent().css("background-color", "red");
    $("#right-well").children().css("color", "orange");
    $(".target:nth-child(2)").addClass("animated bounce");

  });
</script>

<!-- Only change code above this line. -->

<div class="container-fluid">
  <h3 class="text-primary text-center">jQuery Playground</h3>
  <div class="row">
    <div class="col-xs-6">
      <h4>#left-well</h4>
      <div class="well" id="left-well">
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target1">#target1</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target2">#target2</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target3">#target3</button>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="col-xs-6">
      <h4>#right-well</h4>
      <div class="well" id="right-well">
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target4">#target4</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target5">#target5</button>
        <button class="btn btn-default target" id="target6">#target6</button>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Your browser information:

Your Browser User Agent is: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/64.0.3282.186 Safari/537.36.

Link to the challenge:
https://www.freecodecamp.org/challenges/target-a-specific-child-of-an-element-using-jquery

This code is messing it up:

$("#target4").remove();

$("#target2").appendTo("#right-well");

Target4 and target2 are the 2nd ones for each well, so when you move it around or remove it, the animation isn’t going to work.

this works:

$(".target:nth-child(1)").next().addClass("animated bounce");

But I’m not sure exactly what’s going on under the hood for nth-child not to work.