is there a difference between a sway bar and a strut bar...and if there is, can someone tell me?

 

The sway bar (or anti sway bar) goes under the rear axle. The strut bar (or strut tower brace) is under the hood near the firewall. Both assist in keeping the car from rolling excessively in turns or rapid accident avoidance maneuvers. That's the basics anyway.

 

A strut tower brace/shock tower brace is meant for increase the rigidity/structural integrity at the mounting points of the suspension towers since there is ideally a lot of flex at those points.
This gets rid of flexing and noises made by the car twisting, however road noise is more-so transmitted to the passenger cabin, thats the only downside, on newer cars, there is so much thought into reducing NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) that you wont notice a difference.

A sway bar (anti roll bar) is joined by endlinks to suspension components like the control arm, or the strut, its primary function is to reduce roll (anti roll bar). The sway bars effectiveness depends on a few elements, the material its made out of, the diameter of the bar (stiffness is indicated by the third power, so if you increase the bar 10% then the rigidity is increased 30% more or less). You can dial out understeer or oversteer with an adjustable sway bar, and adjustable sway bar endlinks and preloading them. Also how long the arm on the end of the sway bar increases or decreases how effective the bar will be, adjustable sway bars have holes in a rectangle piece of metal