Bonds Combinations

Question

Justin runs $CH_4$, a chemical he knows the spectrum of masses of molecules and fragments of molecules it will contain, on a mass-spectrometer. He knows that all, some, or none of the bonds may break when he places the chemical on the machine. How many different ways can this happen, considering all rotations and reflections separately? Assume multiple breaks are possible. What would the results for $C_2H_6$ be?
I have attempted this question and got $5$ for $CH_4$ and $11$ for $C_2H_6$ by counting manually. I'm confused by the phrase "consider all rotations and reflections"... Which is making me doubt whether I got all possible combinations.

Answer 1

The only way that the requirement to consider symmetries makes sense to me is to interpret it as saying that all of the bonds are labelled. Then $CH_4$ has four bonds, so there are $2^4$ possible subsets which can break; and $C_2 H_6$ has seven bonds, so there are $2^7$ possible subsets which can break.

However, this makes the intro about the mass spectrometer completely irrelevant, so I would have to say that I consider the question to be either badly flawed or (almost as bad) deliberately attempting to mislead.