1. What is static in java?

2. How is it possible for two String objects with identical values not to be equal under the == operator?

Static in Java

1 .- Static means one per class, not one for each object no matter how many instance of a class might exist. This means that you can use them without creating an instance of a class.Static methods are implicitly final, because overriding is done based on the type of the object, and static methods are attached to a class, not an object. A static method in a superclass can be shadowed by another static method in a subclass, as long as the original method was not declared final. However, you can't override a static method with a nonstatic method. In other words, you can't change a static method into an instance method in a subclass.

2. The == operator compares two objects to determine if they are the same object in memory i.e. present in the same memory location. It is possible for two String objects to have the same value, but located in different areas of memory.