@article{lo_beichner_2019, title={Stick With It! Helping Students Understand Free-Body Diagrams - A Magnet Activity as a Tool for Understanding}, volume={57}, ISSN={["0031-921X"]}, DOI={10.1119/1.5126823}, abstractNote={For many students, introductory physics is an enormous hurdle to cross in their educational careers. Studies show that many students struggle with basic vector concepts and hold misconceptions of fundamental principles like Newton’s laws, ideas essential to the understanding of higher-order physics concepts and for achieving success in engineering and the other sciences. As it currently stands, common introductory textbooks provide insufficient guidance for students to learn the nuances of creating free-body diagrams. Such textbooks merely give a trivial example of a single object in equilibrium with only two forces on it when introducing the topic, and when giving more difficult examples, especially for multi-object systems, they fail to provide sufficient guidance on specific steps to create the free-body diagrams for each part of the system. Perhaps an even greater failing of these textbooks is the complete lack of emphasis on vector magnitudes, which can lead to unrealistic free-body diagrams that are unhelpful and can even be detrimental to student understanding. When drawn properly, free-body diagrams can be used as a quick reality check at the end of a problem.}, number={7}, journal={PHYSICS TEACHER}, author={Lo, William and Beichner, Robert J.}, year={2019}, month={Oct}, pages={459–461} }
 @article{mitchell_lo_genc_lebeau_augustyn_2017, title={Transition from Battery to Pseudocapacitor Behavior via Structural Water in Tungsten Oxide}, volume={29}, ISSN={["1520-5002"]}, DOI={10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b05485}, abstractNote={The kinetics of energy storage in transition metal oxides are usually limited by solid-state diffusion, and the strategy most often utilized to improve their rate capability is to reduce ion diffusion distances by utilizing nanostructured materials. Here, another strategy for improving the kinetics of layered transition metal oxides by the presence of structural water is proposed. To investigate this strategy, the electrochemical energy storage behavior of a model hydrated layered oxide, WO3·2H2O, is compared with that of anhydrous WO3 in an acidic electrolyte. It is found that the presence of structural water leads to a transition from battery-like behavior in the anhydrous WO3 to ideally pseudocapacitive behavior in WO3·2H2O. As a result, WO3·2H2O exhibits significantly improved capacity retention and energy efficiency for proton storage over WO3 at sweep rates as fast as 200 mV s–1, corresponding to charge/discharge times of just a few seconds. Importantly, the energy storage of WO3·2H2O at such rates ...}, number={9}, journal={CHEMISTRY OF MATERIALS}, author={Mitchell, James B. and Lo, William C. and Genc, Arda and LeBeau, James and Augustyn, Veronica}, year={2017}, month={May}, pages={3928–3937} }