Technicality requirement of scientific papers.

[mardlamock]

Hello everyone, for the past few months I have been building a low cost high powered rocket with an arduino based parachute deployment system and dead reckoning (highly inaccurate though, I really dont get kalman filters).

I have had to learn a lot of calculus (I wont even see derivatives in school till next year) and a bit of nonlinear diff equations, my question is though, how technical do scientific papers have to be in order to get published? The paper describes the design and construction of the rocket, all of it using off the shelf materials, the different tests performed (2 thrust measurements, 7 static tests in total, 5 failures) and problems one might face when deciding what to build it with.

I have also got an euler approximation of the differential equation that describes the motion of the rocket under aerodynamic drag, taking into account changes in the drag coefficient as a function of mach number and the change in air density, as well as simulation of the rocket engine using external software (its called burnsim), I do not know if this would be enough for the paper to get published though.

The parachute deployment is pretty basic right now (just a simple timer, run and light the candle in a given time frame), but I am trying to improve it, my biggest problem is that the 6dof imu that I am using is pretty flimsy, and considering that the rocket will experience around 30gs ( if the pvc can withstand the 8.5 mpa that is) I doubt it is a good idea to put it on a rocket. Anyways, I just wanted to know what you guys though and if this could be considered a half serious thing or it wont be published at all, thanks!

[Redjoker]

It would probably help to know in what scientific journals you hope to get published in, since that would provide a large amount of examples to show you how your paper should be formatted and how technical it needs to be.

[sumghai]

As someone who has contributed to one scientific paper myself, it's not so much how "technical" the language has to be, but what new knowledge your paper will contribute to the overall body of a particular scientific discipline.

Scientific papers are published through conference proceeding and/or scientific journals, and are vetted by a review board of experts in the field. If you're just reproducing results using existing knowledge / materials / technology, they won't accept it for publication. You can't also self-publish a paper as you would publish a novel or a short story, as that puts into question your scientific integrity.

Here's the paper I helped co-author, where my research team proposed the use of artificial muscles to simulate the "stretchiness" of a newborn baby's lung. I helped design the electronics control hardware for the artificial muscle membrane itself, but what made our research publishable was the fact that no-one had considered such a use before (the artificial muscle membrane themselves are relatively novel but already manufactured commercially by certain companies).

[Wanderfound]

You don't have to be officially credentialed to get into a journal, but you do need to format it to the journal's standards and convince a group of peer reviewers that your paper is both competently written and makes a significant novel contribution to the field.

Pick out a journal with a low Impact Factor that publishes on this topic, have a look at the other papers in that journal, and look up the submission process.

If you need help, I'd be willing to have a look for you, but be prepared for any critique to be a bit ego-bruising. Peer reviewers are not gentle in their commentary.

This is me: https://sydney.academia.edu/CraigMotbey

[mardlamock]

Thanks a lot everyone!

First off, I really dont care what journal it is published on so long as it can be easily accessed by people to critique it and maybe used for their own projects. I do not believe it adds a lot to very experienced people who might read it, all I am doing is applying well known simple methods to achieve the results wanted. Those are to make a paper which can be used by people who are not specialized in the field to design and build a rocket according to their own requirements whilst keeping it all as low cost as possible.

I havent seen any papers really dedicated to the different steps involved in doing so, all of the ones that are somehow related mix 3d printing to rocketry, but having tried 3d printing myself I can say it is expensive if done at a smaller scale, same results can be achieved with lower budgets and off the shelf materials. These methods could be applied by small groups of people wanting to do a variety of things, from cloud seeding to getting readings from the atmosphere, or maybe testing low cost inertial navigation systems. Does that count as adding knowledge?

I appreciate the help and will be updating you guys as it becomes something a bit more readable and structured. Thanks!

[sumghai]

Thanks a lot everyone!

First off, I really dont care what journal it is published on so long as it can be easily accessed by people to critique it and maybe used for their own projects. I do not believe it adds a lot to very experienced people who might read it, all I am doing is applying well known simple methods to achieve the results wanted. Those are to make a paper which can be used by people who are not specialized in the field to design and build a rocket according to their own requirements whilst keeping it all as low cost as possible.

I havent seen any papers really dedicated to the different steps involved in doing so, all of the ones that are somehow related mix 3d printing to rocketry, but having tried 3d printing myself I can say it is expensive if done at a smaller scale, same results can be achieved with lower budgets and off the shelf materials. These methods could be applied by small groups of people wanting to do a variety of things, from cloud seeding to getting readings from the atmosphere, or maybe testing low cost inertial navigation systems. Does that count as adding knowledge?

You're probably better off just starting a web blog or submitting an ordinary article to a website to document your results, or signing up to an actual rocketry forum.

The reason you don't see papers dedicated to the conventional model rocketry work you've done is because:

- The bulk of the theory involved in your work was already formulated in the 1920's (the aerodynamics)

- It's been done so often, it is considered common knowledge; specifically, "cloud seeding to getting readings from the atmosphere, or maybe testing low cost inertial navigation systems" were all already done by NASA using sounding rockets

- Electronics in model rocketry are already fairly commonplace (one can already buy ready-made avionics for the cost of an Arduino or less).

- Access to scientific papers generally requires subscription to a major journal, not just a quick search via Google or even Google Scholar

3D-printed rocket components are novel because no-one had considered additive manufacturing for aerospace applications before.

Overall, I do understand your enthusiasm, but I really don't think your work is novel enough to warrant a "scientific paper".

[mardlamock]

Thanks for the reply man! I know it is common knowledge, thats why I wondered wether it is actually adding anything or just explicitly appyling the bulk of the theory. I will still continue with the project just for fun and to try and learn some things on my own, given that most I cant really access the papers that actually talk about the topic at a great extent I will just continue experimenting. I will follow your advice, I greatly appretiate you taking the time to answer. Thanks!

[cpast]

A scientific journal is also not the best place for what you want your paper to do. Scientific papers are not targeted to who your target audience seems to be; they are written for experts in the field, who are themselves working on novel research in that area. If your target is not people who are specialized in the field, and who know, if not necessarily *everything* in that field, at least a fairly vast amount about it, then a science journal will reach the exact wrong people, because it reaches exactly those people. Instead, you might want to consider a rocketry forum (as sumghai said) or magazine, or maybe a DIY site/magazine? That's more likely to reach people who are interested but not themselves experts.

EDIT: Continuing to experiment is great! You might also considering looking for people in your area working on this kind of thing (if you don't know where to find one, asking professors at a nearby university might help), to find someone experienced to help mentor you. But whatever else, keep working on this, because getting hands-on experience with experimentation is incredibly valuable.

Edited August 12, 2014 by cpast

[Wanderfound]

Thanks for the reply man! I know it is common knowledge, thats why I wondered wether it is actually adding anything or just explicitly appyling the bulk of the theory. I will still continue with the project just for fun and to try and learn some things on my own, given that most I cant really access the papers that actually talk about the topic at a great extent I will just continue experimenting. I will follow your advice, I greatly appretiate you taking the time to answer. Thanks!

If you have any friends who are university students, get them to lend you their library login so you can download papers. Alternatively, if there's anything that you want to read that's behind a paywall, send an email to the authors asking for a copy. Most scientists will be so delighted by the thought that somebody actually wants to read their work that they'll be happy to send you a PDF.

You'll also find plenty of material in the open-access journals these days. Check out PLoS.

[mardlamock]

I ve been trying to get in contact with the universities here, but none of them have rally payed me any attention whatsoever, I ve called at least 10 times and none of them did they actually contact me with an engineer or someone who could mentor me. I even went to one of the few companies here that build satellites (satellogic for those wondering) and spoke them quite a deal about what I was doing and got to meet their team and see how they controlled their spacecraft, but in the last few months I havent been able to get them to answer my emails (most likely due to them being too damn long). I was also wondering if publishing my findings on a magazine or such would help me get accepted into college in the US, could it? My grades in the sciences are pretty good but subjects like literature make my gpa quite a lot lower, thats why i really want to know if doing these experiments is taken into account. Thanks everyone, i will keep you updated!

[cpast]

Keep up the experiments; having something you care about and are doing research on for the sole reason that you want to is probably as or more important than your GPA, honestly.

With the universities: How have you been approaching them? Have you been contacting professors and grad students directly (maybe via email)? The thing most likely to work is getting to know one mentor, instead of trying to keep working with the whole team. Have you tried directly asking one of them if they or someone they know might be willing to mentor you? If not, that might help -- someone who doesn't want to keep answering random questions might be more willing to help if they know what's going on with the project, and have some understanding what you're looking for (a longer-term thing). If what you want is just working on research in the field (and aren't wedded to this particular project), you could ask if they'd like a high school intern on what they're doing (which again would not mean you have to abandon this project). No matter what, keep trying.

[K^2]

dead reckoning (highly inaccurate though, I really dont get kalman filters).

I love Kalman Filters. Let me know if you want any help with the filtering algorithm.

[Wanderfound]

I ve been trying to get in contact with the universities here, but none of them have rally payed me any attention whatsoever, I ve called at least 10 times and none of them did they actually contact me with an engineer or someone who could mentor me.

Don't phone, email. As a general rule, science and engineering academics have a completely insane workload; 70+ hours per week in the lab is routine. I did six months straight of seven day a week 12-hour nightshifts a few years ago.

Make it easy for them to help you, don't interrupt them when they're working and don't get cranky with them if they can't spare the time. Most scientists are fanatically passionate about their topic and enjoy sharing their enthusiasm with others. But they are also extremely overworked, underpaid and permanently stressed out.

Edited August 12, 2014 by Wanderfound

[christok]

I ve been trying to get in contact with the universities here, but none of them have rally payed me any attention whatsoever, I ve called at least 10 times and none of them did they actually contact me with an engineer or someone who could mentor me. I even went to one of the few companies here that build satellites (satellogic for those wondering) and spoke them quite a deal about what I was doing and got to meet their team and see how they controlled their spacecraft, but in the last few months I havent been able to get them to answer my emails (most likely due to them being too damn long). I was also wondering if publishing my findings on a magazine or such would help me get accepted into college in the US, could it? My grades in the sciences are pretty good but subjects like literature make my gpa quite a lot lower, thats why i really want to know if doing these experiments is taken into account. Thanks everyone, i will keep you updated!

It sounds to me like you basically asked "please tell me everything". That won't work. You'll need to do the research on your own, then you can contact someone with a specific question when you get stuck, along the lines of "I tried this and that as recommended by these books, but I'm not getting it right. Could you tell me what I'm doing wrong, or at least point me in the direction of the right books?"

As for publishing your work, a proper scientific journal is not for you, nor is arxiv. You want to find a science journal for kids, of which there are several.

[mardlamock]

It sounds to me like you basically asked "please tell me everything". That won't work. You'll need to do the research on your own, then you can contact someone with a specific question when you get stuck, along the lines of "I tried this and that as recommended by these books, but I'm not getting it right. Could you tell me what I'm doing wrong, or at least point me in the direction of the right books?"

As for publishing your work, a proper scientific journal is not for you, nor is arxiv. You want to find a science journal for kids, of which there are several.

I didnt ask them to tell me everything, I just asked for some good reference books regarding rocket control systems and engine design, I had found one that explained quite a lot of the engine design aspect of a rocket, but it was quite hard for me to understand as it (for me) required you to have a ton of previous knowledge. I will try to get the email of someone in the mech eng department of a university, I know for sure that one is doing work on rocketry but I havent been able to find specifically who he is and what he is doing. Christok, the purpose of what I am writing is so that other non specialized people like me dont have to go through all of the hassle of looking for information on the different systems present in a rocket and figure out how to use that information how to build one. I will take a look into those journals you talked about, thanks!

[christok]

Fair enough. The problem is that you want to know rocket engineering without the technical details, which contradicts itself. You'll just have to learn them.

Rocket Propulsion Elements by Sutton & Biblarz is a pretty standard textbook in the American SOI but I think you may want to start with something a little simpler. (The mathematics required to understand the book isn't all that advanced so you could probably get away with doing some calculus and mechanics on Coursera if you worked hard. You also don't need to understand everything in a book to benefit from it.)

If you can't find the books you need, try getting the names of suitable books and get an inter-library loan if you can't find them locally and can't afford them. Microcosm Press has a fairly large collection, as does Amazon.

P.S. I think you meant motor. Engines are liquid-fueled and it won't help you to look up the wrong term.

[jwenting]

sorry to blow your illusion, but if you've not even been taught calculus yet you should just give up trying to write any scientific paper about anything having to do with the physical sciences or engineering.

You might get by with something about "gender studies" or "comparative English poetry" but that's about it.

[Wanderfound]

sorry to blow your illusion, but if you've not even been taught calculus yet you should just give up trying to write any scientific paper about anything having to do with the physical sciences or engineering.

You might get by with something about "gender studies" or "comparative English poetry" but that's about it.

I'm breathtakingly useless at calculus [1], and I got by just fine [2] in behavioural neuroscience and psychopharmacology. Whether those count or not is going to depend on your definition of "physical sciences", but it's worth remembering that not all science is physics.

But, yes, calculus is very helpful for physics and engineering. You're going to have to learn it eventually, Mardlamok; may as well start now. Don't wait on the school to bring it to you, go out and get it.

[1] Full-on math-phobic; I had a ten-year gap between high school and university, then got thrown in the deep end with 3-D calculus from 7:30 to 9am every morning for my first two semesters.

[2] https://sydney.academia.edu/CraigMotbey

[mardlamock]

Fair enough. The problem is that you want to know rocket engineering without the technical details, which contradicts itself. You'll just have to learn them.

Rocket Propulsion Elements by Sutton & Biblarz is a pretty standard textbook in the American SOI but I think you may want to start with something a little simpler. (The mathematics required to understand the book isn't all that advanced so you could probably get away with doing some calculus and mechanics on Coursera if you worked hard. You also don't need to understand everything in a book to benefit from it.)

If you can't find the books you need, try getting the names of suitable books and get an inter-library loan if you can't find them locally and can't afford them. Microcosm Press has a fairly large collection, as does Amazon.

P.S. I think you meant motor. Engines are liquid-fueled and it won't help you to look up the wrong term.

You got me wrong, I really want to learn the details but not have to go through 10 different books for each of the systems for a rocket. I am using exactly that book (when i started it was like reading chinese).

[mardlamock]

I'm breathtakingly useless at calculus [1], and I got by just fine [2] in behavioural neuroscience and psychopharmacology. Whether those count or not is going to depend on your definition of "physical sciences", but it's worth remembering that not all science is physics.

But, yes, calculus is very helpful for physics and engineering. You're going to have to learn it eventually, Mardlamok; may as well start now. Don't wait on the school to bring it to you, go out and get it.

[1] Full-on math-phobic; I had a ten-year gap between high school and university, then got thrown in the deep end with 3-D calculus from 7:30 to 9am every morning for my first two semesters.

[2] https://sydney.academia.edu/CraigMotbey

I taught myself single variable calculus and a bit of diff equations (not too much of the latter).

[Godot]

You got me wrong, I really want to learn the details but not have to go through 10 different books for each of the systems for a rocket. I am using exactly that book (when i started it was like reading chinese).

The problem is that this is the basics of scientific papers ...

that is, to research through older papers about the same topic and then, on basics of this, display (as an introduction)

what former researchers did and what you do differently in your experiments (all the while observing the rules of citation)

(and, of course, then describing/displaying your experimental setup in a way that the experiment can be reproduced by other researchers ...

and, ideally, comparing your experimental results with that of other works)

[christok]

You got me wrong, I really want to learn the details but not have to go through 10 different books for each of the systems for a rocket. I am using exactly that book (when i started it was like reading chinese).

But then, if it isn't Chinese anymore you've made progress. You can skip over most of the details for now. Ignore stop & start transients. Pretend the walls are adiabatic. Etc. Use only the spherical cows each topic starts with and skip over the more accurate methods until you've improved your skills. Look up terms that don't make sense and if they still don't make sense, put the book down. Anything seems a lot easier when you read it a second time days later.

[mardlamock]

But then, if it isn't Chinese anymore you've made progress. You can skip over most of the details for now. Ignore stop & start transients. Pretend the walls are adiabatic. Etc. Use only the spherical cows each topic starts with and skip over the more accurate methods until you've improved your skills. Look up terms that don't make sense and if they still don't make sense, put the book down. Anything seems a lot easier when you read it a second time days later.

It isnt chinese anymore, its like reading shakespeare, making progress but not quite there. I find myself lacking not so much the mathematical knowledge but rather the physical one, for example, not knowing where fluid mechanics comes from, bla bla bla. I can apply formulae (after looking up what each symbol means that is), but it is like doing guesswork due not not understanding what it all means until i get the result.I enjoy learning that stuff though, its hard the first time, but fun once you see the progress you ve made.

[christok]

I can apply formulae (after looking up what each symbol means that is), but it is like doing guesswork due not not understanding what it all means until i get the result.

We've all experienced that before. It's from stuff you sort-of know but haven't really practiced. Go for an introductory mechanics MOOC.

[Wanderfound]

BTW, have you explored forums like these: http://www.rocketrysouthcarolina.com/forum.php?

That's just the first thing to come up when I Googled; you can probably find something local-ish if you look.