A university laboratory places an aluminium block on a Teflon-lined wooden board. For its inclined plane stage, the pulley and block string are removed; a rope and hook connect the board to a crank. The block is placed gently near the sheet's middle without prior sliding. Smooth cranking raises the board; a – protractor reads the smallest angle at which sliding begins. Four readings are taken without added load, then four each with , , and added symmetrically at two screws. Removing the string isolates gravity-driven onset; gentle placement and smooth raising avoid premature disturbance.[ref]
Infer under the assumptions of static friction on an inclined plane. Repetition tests onset scatter; added loads test coefficient constancy. No measured onset values are supplied here.
For a replication, additionally check the protractor zero with a level board, retain the same contact face and surface region, and observe whether tipping or rolling precedes sliding. These are proposed additional controls. A finite angle resolution and the disturbance needed to detect first motion limit the estimate; a slow ramp does not by itself establish perfectly rigid, dry, or direction-independent contact. At the model's threshold, differentiating the tangent function gives , with in radians. A hypothetical measurement error would therefore correspond to approximately in the inferred coefficient at first order. This sensitivity calculation is not an uncertainty reported by the laboratory.