How many 'words' with five letters are there that start with a vowel and end with an s?
To find the number of five-letter words that start with a vowel and end with an 's', we consider the vowels A, E, I, O, and U, giving us 5 options for the first letter. The remaining three letters can be any of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Thus, the total number of combinations is 5 (vowels) × 26 × 26 × 26 (for the three middle letters) × 1 (for the last letter 's'), resulting in 5 × 26^3 = 5 × 17,576 = 87,880.