A4kg book sits on a table and your pet hamster puts his front paws on the book and pushes down with a force of 3n. what is the normal force?

There are three forces acting on the book. 
1. Force due to gravity
2. Force exerted downward by the hamster
3. Normal Force in reaction to the downward forces

Since the book is not moving, the net force is zero. The summation of all forces must be zero. Then we could find the normal force which is unknown (denoted as x).

∑F = -(4 kg)(9.81 m/s2) - 3 N + x =0
∑F = -39.24 N - 3N + x =0
x = 42 N

Therefore, the normal force is 42 N.

    m₁v₁ + m₂v₂ = (m₁ + m₂)vmomentum is conserved.the left-hand side of the equation represents the momentum in the system before the collision.the right-hand side represents the momentum in the system after the collisionm₁ and v₁ represents the mass and the velocity of the physics blockm₂ and v₂ represents the mass and velocity of the ball of puttyv represents the final velocity of the combined mass.the question states the two masses stick together. they combined mass has its own velocity with the body mass the sum of the two objects' massestheir combined momentum is (m₁ + m₂)vto find the magitude of (m₁ + m₂)v, we need to add the vectors on the left-hand side of the equation: m₁v₁ + m₂v₂.note the diagram. i have positioned the vectors in accordance with their directions.the magnitude of the resultant can be calculated using the pythagorean theorem since this is a right triangle situation (north and west are perpendicular)|(m₁ + m₂)v| =  √[ (m₁v₁)² + (m₂v₂)² ]|(m₁ + m₂)v| =  √[ (1.5kg·8.0m/s)² + (0.40kg·20m/s)² ]|(m₁ + m₂)v| =  14.4 kg m/sfor two significant figures (assuming that 20m/s is two), this rounds to 14 kg m/s