the plane and vibrations going in the other direction on the other side and they cancel each other out at the nodal plane this neutral nodal plane 60 is typically found in between the bottom of the piezoelectric stack 16 and the top of the horn 18 or somewhere proximate referring back to fig1 in a preferred embodiment the outside housing 62 for the ultrasonic sonic jackhammer is mounted to the actuator at its nodal plane 60 so that the housing remains substantially motionless even during operation handles 22 can be further affixed to the housing 62 so that the handles also remain substantially motionless during operation eliminating potential hazard for the operator and enabling integration with lightweight platforms and robots of course the handles can be affixed directly to the actuator and as long as they are somehow rigidly connected to the nodal plane of the actuator the handles will remain substantially motionless during operation in addition the attachment of handles to a nodal plane or to a housing connected to the actuator at a nodal plane will eliminate the loss of energy associated with motion of the handles if the handles do not move no mechanical energy will flow through them to some object or some person holding the handles the ultrasonic sonic jackhammer can be used to screen the drilling location benefiting from the inherent probing capability of the piezoelectric actuator to operate as a sounding mechanism and as a mechanical impedance analyzer a variety of sensors 70 fig3 can be embedded in or disposed on the impactor i e in physical contact with the impactor to measure mechanical and electrical properties of the object that is in contact with the impactor a control system is used to receive signals from the sensors and to produce valuable.