Both 知る and わかる get used for "know", "understand", "learn", "find out", and various other concepts. How do you know which to use when? Are there any rules to help you decide?
Additionally, both of these verbs regularly appear in several different forms:
知る、知った、知っている
わかる、わかった、わかっている
In what situations do you use each form, and how does the meaning change?
Answer
As stated in some of the other answers, the fundamental difference is that 分{わ}かる is "to understand", and 知{し}る is "to know", which helps differentiate the two as concepts. However, I think that doesn't fully answer your question.
Many years ago, early in my Japanese learning, when a Japanese friend asked me what I was going to do tomorrow, I said 「知{し}らない」, and my friend laughed. She explained that it would be more common to answer 「分{わ}からない」.
This would be opposite to English, where our answer would be that we "don't know" what we're going to do tomorrow, which is why I thought to say it that way. To say we "don't understand" what we're going to do tomorrow could be awkward enough to get a laugh.
After exploring the reasons why she laughed, I believe the difference comes down to a concept of 内{うち}, "inside", versus 外{そと}, "outside", which is a large and useful concept to grasp in Japanese culture and language. It's too big to go fully go into here, but a very short description is that in Japanese culture there is a high degree of sensitivity to how some people and information is part of the "inner circle" of your life, and other people and information are not included.
As it relates to 分{わ}かる and 知{し}る, you can think of it like 分{わ}かる has an implication of your personal knowledge, the things that relate to you, the things a person can decide on, etc... Only you can "know" what you do tomorrow, or decide on it, or reflect on it. It is 「内{うち}のこと」, so to speak. Thus, 分{わ}かる is the appropriate term for such matters.
Whereas 知{し}る is for the things that are facts independent of you, like the atomic weight of cesium, what the airspeed velocity of a sparrow is, how Korean and Japanese chopsticks differ, etc... 「外{そと}のこと」.
That said, it would be a mistake to draw a hard line to separate what is personal knowledge and what is a fact in the universe.
You could use 分{わ}かる for the airspeed velocity of a sparrow, if it was something you studied and knew about. By learning about it, you develop a relationship to the information, and it becomes 内{うち}のこと. If, for example, you were a professor of ornithology at Tokyo University and had done your dissertation on sparrow flight speeds.
In an opposite situation, you could use 知{し}らない for something that might ordinarily be thought of as 内{うち}のこと. For example, using 知{し}らない to say that you don't know what your father is doing tomorrow. However, by saying that what your father is doing is 外{そと}のこと, you are conveying that this is something external to you, which seems cold since you're talking about your dad. It says something about your relationship as well as your knowledge.
As a result, there can be an implication if "I don't care" interwoven into the use of 知{し}らない in some situations. My friend laughed at me saying 知{し}らない for what I am going to do tomorrow, because it's as if the next day's schedule is some kind of established fact that I have not cared enough to study. Even more extreme than not knowing what my father is going to do, I have a disconnect to my own life.
Even though it might be that what happens tomorrow is contingent on circumstances beyond my control, like my boss calling me in for work or an asteroid destroying my city. It's still up to me to react to what happens, to own the knowledge, and convey it to you. What will happen tomorrow is information that flows through me, so it is 内{うち}のこと.
Further, 内{うち}のこと isn't always your 内{うち}のこと, but it can be somebody's. In the news, they often report information using 分{わ}かる to convey that the information comes via someone else, and so responsibility for the information is not on the reporter. Similar to how in English we would use terms like "alleged", "revealed", "reported", and other terms that pass the buck. The news is often other people's 内{うち}のこと.
Of course when it comes right down to it, there will be a big, smudgy, greyish boundary between the two concepts. No doubt people could come up with a many borderline cases where one or the other might equally apply. I think it's the kind of thing that native speakers might disagree about which is more correct in certain specific circumstances.
Hope that helps.
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