Paula has a flower pot in the shape of a rectangular prism. She has computed the area of the base of the flower pot to be 7 8 square foot. The height of the prism is 2 3 foot. Paula wants to know how much soil she needs to fill the pot, so she computes its volume. What is the volume of the flower pot?

So the first thing we do is to multiply the top equation by 3. the reason i want to do this is i notice there will be a 6y on both equations and can possibly add/subtract them. so we get 6y = -3x + 27. adding that and the second equation we get 6x = 27-15 which is 12. divide by 6 and we get 2. ∴ x = 2. substituting 2 into the first equation we get 2y = -2 + 9 which is 7. divide by 2 and we get 7/2. ∴ y = 7/2, x = 2.