Question

A musician hits a drum with a drumstick. In three to four sentences, explain the collision forces between the drum and drumstick.

Answer 1

When the stick strikes the drumhead it exerts a rapidly changing contact force that locally deforms the skin and drives the drum shell into vibration. By Newton’s third law the drumhead pushes back with an equal and opposite force, producing an impulse that changes the stick’s momentum and often causes it to rebound. The peak force and its duration depend on impact speed, the masses and stiffnesses of stick and head, contact area, and damping, giving a characteristic force–time profile. Part of the stick’s kinetic energy is stored elastically and radiated as sound (and some heat), while inelastic losses and the coefficient of restitution determine how much energy is returned to the stick.