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 they deform briefly and exert a rapidly varying contact (normal) force on each other; by Newton’s third law the drumhead exerts an equal and opposite force on the stick. That force acts over a short time (an impulse) and changes the momenta: the stick typically rebounds while the drumhead is set into vibration. The time profile and peak of the force pulse control how much kinetic energy is converted into elastic vibration and radiated as sound versus lost to heat and damping, and they determine which vibrational modes (timbre) are excited. Peak force and impulse depend on stick speed and mass, contact area and stiffness/tension of the drumhead.