Calculating Impulse and Force in a Head-On Collision

[pinksparkles2]

Homework Statement

A 500kg truck collides head on with a 400kg car. They stick together and continue traveling west at 6.00 meters per second. The truck initially travels at 13.0 meters per second. Calculate the impulse and force for the car given that the time of impact was 0.6 seconds.

The Attempt at a Solution

Using the Law of the Conservation of Momentum, I figured out that the car's velocity is 2.75 meters per second and that is as far as I got.

 

[haruspex]

A 500kg truck collides head on with a 400kg car. They stick together and continue traveling west at 6.00 meters per second. The truck initially travels at 13.0 meters per second. Calculate the impulse and force for the car given that the time of impact was 0.6 seconds.

Using the Law of the Conservation of Momentum, I figured out that the car's velocity is 2.75 meters per second and that is as far as I got.

There's a piece of information missing. Your answer is correct if the truck was initially heading West. The other possibility is that the car was heading West, very fast, and the truck East.
For each individual vehicle, its change in momentum is the impulse from the other.
The impulse is the integral of force over time, so you can get the average force during the impact by dividing the impulse by the duration. But that could be quite a bit less than the peak force.