Stupid Question

I am fairly new to amateur astromony but I own two telescopes. Both celestron. One firstscope 114EQ and one nexstar 114. The firstscope is nearly twice the length of the nexstar but the focal length is shorter. Why.

Not a stupid question; the answer is that the 114EQ is a Newtonian reflector design in which the light enters the tube, is reflected off a parabolic mirror at the bottom of the tube, diverted off to the side with a diagonal mirror at the top of the tube and focused on the eyepiece. The Nexstar 114 does essentially the same thing in a shorter tube but the focal length is increased by a Barlow lens built into the optical path where the light hits the secondary mirror. Because there are fewer glass surfaces in the light path and light is not refracted through lenses in the 114EQ optical tube you will get clearer and more finely focused and detailed images with the 114EQ. There are also fewer optical elements to get out of alignment. The size of the primary mirror is the same so the resolution (or the separation you can see between 2 close objects) should be the same.