Introduction to the scientific method with tests for the determination of friction coefficients

Abstract

A simple view about what is a scientific theory is presented through Karl R. Popper's thinking, combined with an experimental scientific method to galileano mode and its realization, finished with a critical and quantitative analysis. It must be noticed that usually the practice is writing about one or another subject in specific journals or discussion circles, i. e., to the scientific thought itself or about a specific experiment.  Thus, this work presents a proposal where the thought about science teams up with a way to do it in a didactic form, providing theoretical support material to professors and students, developing experiments to determine the coefficient of friction between flat surfaces. The intuition is confronted by the realization of experiments with emphasis on attention to the results in order not to induce false conclusions, mainly between beginning students. The results indicated that scatter plots, used widely to define trend lines, should not always be presented as unique results, needing further analysis in order not to be misleading.