Christian+M

__Sources__ “Selecting the right drumstick tip”. //[|www.rockdrummingsystem.com]//. 2007. October 5 2009. <[]>

“How to select drumsticks”. //[|www.drumsticks.com]//. 2009. October 5 2009. <[]>

“Picking out your perfect pair!”. //[|www.vicfirth.com]//. 2009. October 5 2009. <[]>

“Percussion mallet”. //Wikipedia//. October 5 2009. October 5 2009. <[]>

“Types of drum sticks”. //[|www.drumsetworkouts.com]//. 2009. October 5 2009. <[]>

“Choosing the right drumsticks”. //[|www.rockdrummingsystem.com]//. 2009. October 5 2009. <[]>

“How to choose a drumstick”. //[|www.ehow.com]//. 2009. October 5 2009. <[]>

“Which wood is the best?”. //Pro-mark drumstick corporation//. 2009. October 5 2009. <[]>

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__Problem__ What kind of drum stick gets the highest rebound off of the snare drum?

__Hypothesis__ If I test which stick gets the highest rebound out of a maple, hickory, bulky, and nylon-tipped stick, then the nylon-tipped stick will get the highest rebound because the nylon hitting the skin rather than a wood tip should give it a greater bounce.

__Background Info / History__ Drumsticks are wooden or plastic sticks that are used to play percussion instruments such as a trap-set or a snare drum. They come in many different sizes, shapes, colors, and textures. Some sticks are designed a different way to be used for different jobs or activities. They may be dipped for better grip, fit with rubber cores for better bounce, or even crafted a totally different way for different styles and sounds. They can be made from a variety of woods, most commonly maple, oak, and hickory. Each of these woods have their own properties that make the sticks unique. Maple is usually a softer wood than oak and hickory, so larger sticks can be made from it without increasing the weight so much as if it were made with one of the harder woods. Oak usually lasts longest out of all of them, even though it is not considered a ‘hardwood’. It is slightly heavier than hickory, and is usually used for making heavy duty sticks that are supposed to last for a while. Hickory is the most common wood used for making drumsticks, because they're inexpensive to make, but are generally quite versatile. Sticks are also sometimes fit with nylon tips at the end to make cymbal hits sound brighter, because wood hitting cymbals gives it a darker, warmer feel than plastic hitting cymbals. Back in the days of swing clubs and jazz concerts, nylon tips didn’t even exist, but now nylon-tipped sticks are now widely used all over the world for trap-sets. Even the butt end of various sticks can be used to get a different sound out of cymbals and drums. The thickness of the stick can change the sound of rim clicks and rim shots too. Bounce is basically how much rebound you get when a certain amount of force is applied to the stick to hit the drum. The aim of my project is to find which kind of stick out of a select few can get the best bounce off of a snare drum, because the main thing a drummer looks for in a good pair of sticks is how well it bounces.

__Lab Equipment / Materials__ For my materials for this project, I will need a snare drum, a ruler, and a few pairs of drumsticks. The snare drum is the most commonly used drum in marches and other orchestrations, and is also tighter-skinned than other drums, such as the toms. This will make the bounce better, because tighter skin means better rebound. The different kinds of drumsticks will be used to figure out which one has the most bounce. The ruler will be used to measure how high the bounce is in centimeters.

__Information Needed__ I need to know how high the bounce is for each type of stick on the snare drum. The height will be measured in the nearest 1/10th of a centimeter.

__How I Will Make It Work__ I will mount my snare drum and alternate through the different types of sticks. I will find the bounce height of each type of stick by hitting the snare at the fulcrum point (center of snare) from 10 centimeters above the drum skin. In doing this, I ensure that no certain stick bounces higher due to greater or lesser momentum. I will repeat the process with each stick 10 times, then calculate the average height of each stick’s rebound off of the snare drum, and then graph the data in a bar graph. The sticks I will be using are maple, hickory, nylon-tipped, and large sticks. These will most likely provide different results based on the different characteristics that come into play in each of these types of sticks.

__Procedure__ I will have someone hold a centimeter ruler upright on the snare drum skin, while I drop the drum stick from a height of 10 centimeters onto the drum's fulcrum point and record how high the rebound of the stick is to the nearest 1/10th centimeter. Then I will repeat this same process 10 times with every kind of stick. I will collect and graph the data in a histogram to show the average rebound height, and a table to show each individual rebound height to the nearest 1/10th of a centimeter.

The Snare Drum being used for the experiment. The Drum Sticks used for the experiment. From Top to Bottom: Maple, Hickory, Bulky, Nylon Tip

__Data and Observations__
 * Bulky || 5.5 || 5.3 || 5.2 || 5.5 || 5.2 || 5.5 || 5.3 || 5.4 || 5.5 || 5.5 ||
 * Hickory || 5.9 || 5.7 || 5.7 || 5.9 || 5.8 || 5.8 || 5.7 || 5.8 || 5.7 || 5.8 ||
 * Maple || 6 || 6.1 || 5.8 || 6 || 5.8 || 6.1 || 6 || 5.9 || 6 || 5.9 ||
 * Nylon-Tipped || 5.9 || 5.8 || 5.8 || 6 || 5.7 || 5.9 || 6 || 5.9 || 5.7 || 6 ||



In the grand scheme of things, the bulky stick had the least stick rebound, followed by hickory, the nylon-tipped stick, and the maple stick, which had the most rebound. I noticed that the maple stick was slightly lighter than the hickory stick, even though they were all the same size. This is important to note, since the nylon-tipped stick was made of hickory as well. This means that even though both the hickory stick and the nylon-tipped stick are made of the same type of wood, the nylon tip slightly increased the rebound produced by the snare. The bulky stick had the lowest rebound height, due to its weight. The highest bounce for any one trial ended up being the maple stick, with 6.1 centimeters. The lowest bounce ended up being the bulky stick, with only 5.2 centimeters. Also, many of these sticks had a repeating bounce height for a few times throughout the 10 trials, just as I had expected.

__**SCIENCE FAIR RE-DOs**__

__APPLICATION__ The rebound of the drum stick off the drum head helps very much with drumming. If the stick you're using gets better rebound off the same head, then it takes less effort to pull the stick up off the drum head when you hit it. The greater the rebound, the less you have to work against gravity to move the stick from one head to another, because the stick bounces back up for you rather than you exerting more energy to pick it up.

__DISCUSSION__ Figure 3 (the bar graph) shows the AVERAGE rebound height of each type of stick that was used, which was calculated by taking the values from the table and averaging them.

Some ideas for improvement are expanding the variety of types of being sticks being used (white oak, special types of sticks, etc), and also testing the sticks rebound on the tom drum heads and the many different cymbal types. (ride, splash, hihat, crash, zil bell, etc.)

__CONCLUSION__ In conclusion, the maple stick gets the highest rebound off of the snare drum.