jsmith613 said:
what does it mean "the genes are inherited indepentandly"
To see anything in genetics there have to be differences. So say a parent has a difference in his/her A pair of genes. The parent is
Aa. Then the offspring gets
A from that parent half the times and gets
a half the times. Never mind how the composition shows up as phenotype in the parent or offspring according to the other copy of the gene they have. There are even chances of transmitting one or the other version of the gene.
Now at the other locus, suppose the parent is heterozygous there too, it is
Bb. Again it is even chances an offspring gets
B or
b.
Now suppose a parent is Aa Bb . In most cases if an offspring gets A from it, it has an even chance of getting B or b, and if it gets
a it has an even chance of getting B or b. That is the inheritance of A and B are independent.
The extreme opposite is
closely linked inheritance. That would be with the above parent, for example whenever the offspring receives A it receives B too and almost never b. That happens when the A gene and the B gene are close together on a chromosome.
The intermediate case when they are neither always together nor independent which happens when A and B are on the same chromosome but get separated by crossovers.
I hope this eases or confirms explanations that must be in your textbook - we here cannot substitute for those.