Most of the time when people refer to “cell division,” they mean mitosis, the process of making new body cells.

Mitosis (nuclear division) is the most dramatic stage of the cell cycle, corresponding to the separation of daughter chromosomes and usually ending with cell division (cytokinesis).

Mitosis creates two identical daughter cells that each contain the same number of chromosomes as their parent cell.

The law of independent assortment states that the random orientation of homologous chromosome pairs during metaphase I allow for the production of gametes with many different assortments of homologous chromosomes.

Meiosis is the type of cell division that creates egg and sperm cells.

The events that occur in meiosis but not mitosis include homologous chromosomes pairing up, crossing over, and lining up along the metaphase plate in tetrads.

Mendel's law of independent assortment reveals the inheritance pattern of unlinked genes as it occurs at the chromosomal level during meiosis.

We see that chromosomes are randomly assorted into gametes during meiosis, thus leading to all combinations of them being equally probable.