John is making himself a lunch. he has three different soups to choose from, four different kinds of pop, and three different kinds of fruit. how many different lunches can he prepare today

For this problem, we use the Fundamental Counting Principle where it states that if an event has n possible outcome and another independent event has m outcomes then there will be nm total possible outcome. Therefore, there are 3x4x3 = 36 possible different lunch John can make.