  We study the head-on collision of two equal mass, nonrotating black holes.
Various initial configurations are investigated, including holes which are
initially surrounded by a common apparent horizon to holes that are separated
by about $20M$, where $M$ is the mass of a single black hole. We have extracted
both $\ell = 2$ and $\ell=4$ gravitational waveforms resulting from the
collision. The normal modes of the final black hole dominate the spectrum in
all cases studied. The total energy radiated is computed using several
independent methods, and is typically less than $0.002 M$. We also discuss an
analytic approach to estimate the total gravitational radiation emitted in the
collision by generalizing point particle dynamics to account for the finite
size and internal dynamics of the two black holes. The effects of the tidal
deformations of the horizons are analysed using the membrane paradigm of black
holes. We find excellent agreement between the numerical results and the
analytic estimates.
