Journal of High School Research

This is the first issue of Vol. 2 of the journal of High School Research.  This issue of the Journal includes three papers at this time.  The issue will be open till the end of June 2025 and articles will be added as they are accepted and published after the peer review.

The paper by Linseth, S. entitled "Hardware Acceleration of rANS Decoder" presents a hardware implementation of static size that realizes rANS (range Asymmetric Numeral System) decoding in a streaming use case. The rANS algorithm is suitable for this research because all parameters and variables involved are of known and limited size for all possible input data. The simple decoding method of the rANS algorithm allows for efficient hardware acceleration, specifically because all inputs to the algorithm are known on every clock cycle. 

The paper by Sharma, A. and Arief, M.M. entitled "Hydrogen in Aviation: Evaluating the Feasibility and Benefits of a Green Fuel Alternative" demonstrate through an analysis of light aircraft and military applications, we demonstrate that hydrogen-based systems can achieve performance metrics approaching those of traditional fuels while reducing emissions by up to 74.7%.Our findings show that hydrogen’s superior energy-to-mass ratio (120 MJ/kg versus 43 MJ/kg for jet fuel) makes it particularly advantageous for aviation applications compared to battery-electric alternatives. Primary implementation challenges involve cryogenic storage systems (−253°C), tank placement optimization, and fueling infrastructure development. The observed efficiency penalties of only 2.23% in military applications suggest hydrogen’s viability as a sustainable aviation fuel alternative. 

The paper by Nagaraj, V. entitled "The Effect of Various Fin Designs on the Stability, Maximum Height, and Drag of Model Rockets to Maximize Efficiency" presents detailed test and simulation results on efficiency of different fins for model rockets in terms of their  stability, maximum height, and drag in order to provide an optimal design for new rockets.  This research addresses a current gap, a lack of research into the physical components of rockets. Three different model rockets were designed, were built physically and were launched multiple times, both physically and in simulations, to collect data. The data were analyzed to find the differences between the performances of each of the fins and determine which fins maximized the efficiency of the rocket.  The control group for this experiment was a rocket with trapezoidal fins, while the experimental groups had elliptical and clipped-delta fins. These results show that there was a significant difference in the performance of the three fin models and that the control group’s fins, i.e., trapezoidal fins, can be used to optimize the performance of rockets.