A small sedan and a large pickup truck experience a head-on collision. Which vehicle experiences the greater impulse during the collision?

Jake -

Impulse is force times time.
As DrWLS explained, the forces are equal and opposite.
The incident happens over the same time span for both.
So the force times the time is the same for both.

Although both have the same magnitude of change of momentum |mv| your intuitive reply would be correct if we were talking about change of speed. The bigger mass of the truck would cause it to change speed little but the small mass of the car would mean a large change in its speed.

Since the forces they exert on each other are equal and opposite (because of Newton's thrd law), the impulses that they exert are also of equal magnitude.

Small sedan will experience a larger force because the truck is heavier (more mass and more momentum if they both travel at equal velocity) so it's not going to move much from the collision.

Jake's answer is wrong, as your teacher will verify.

To determine which vehicle experiences the greater impulse during the collision, we can look at the impulse-momentum principle.

Impulse is defined as the change in momentum of an object, which is the product of its mass and velocity. Mathematically, impulse can be expressed as:

Impulse = change in momentum

Momentum = mass × velocity

Since momentum is directly proportional to both mass and velocity, the vehicle with a larger mass or a higher velocity will experience a greater momentum change, and thus a greater impulse.

In general, larger vehicles tend to have greater masses than smaller vehicles due to their size and design. Additionally, pickup trucks often have more powerful engines that allow them to reach higher velocities compared to smaller sedans.

Therefore, in a head-on collision between a small sedan and a large pickup truck, the large pickup truck will likely experience the greater impulse, due to its larger mass and potentially higher velocity.