Final answer:
There are 10 possible gear combinations on a bicycle with 2 gears in the front and 5 gears in the rear, calculated by simply multiplying the two numbers.
Step-by-step explanation:
When a bicycle has 2 gears in the front and 5 gears in the rear, we can find out the number of different combinations of gears by multiplying the number of front gears by the number of rear gears. You can think of this as each front gear having 5 different rear gears that it can pair with.
So, if you have 2 front gears, each front gear pair can match with any of the 5 rear gears, creating 2 x 5 = 10 possible gear combinations. It's important to remember that when calculating possible outcomes in this context, we are considering each unique pair of front and rear gears as a distinct combination, not repeated independent situations like flipping a coin multiple times.