To calculate the volume of a rectangular prism, you need to multiply its length, width, and height together.

In this example, we have a rectangular prism with the following dimensions: a length of $7 \, \text{cm}$, a width of $3 \, \text{cm}$, and a height of $2 \, \text{cm}$. The formula for the volume $V$ of a rectangular prism is given by:

Now, let’s substitute the provided dimensions into the formula:

First, we will calculate the product of the length and the width:

Next, we will multiply the result by the height:

Thus, the volume of the rectangular prism is $42 \, \text{cm}^3$. This indicates that the prism can contain $42 \, \text{cm}^3$ of space within it. Remember that volume is always expressed in cubic units; in this case, we use cubic centimetres ($\text{cm}^{3}$) because volume quantifies three-dimensional space.