We study the mechanical characteristics of the bounce phenomena in an electrical switching system. The electrical switching system, which is called a card-relay, consists mainly of an electromagnet, an actuator, a traveling contact and a fixed contact. First, the bounce phenomena, which include the impacts and the residual vibrations of both contacts, are investigated experimentally by measuring their velocitieS. Second, such bounce phenomena are examined theoretically using the governing equation in which the electromagnetic elastic coupling in the electrical switching system is considered, and the first and second vibration modes of the traveling contact are taken into account in order to evaluate its complicated behavior. Finally we clarify the feature of the bounce phenomena by comparing the experimental results with the theoretical ones.