  In this note we introduce a hierarchy of phase spaces for static friction,
which give a graphical way to systematically quantify the directional
dependence in static friction via subregions of the phase spaces. We
experimentally plot these subregions to obtain phenomenological descriptions
for static friction in various examples where the macroscopic shape of the
object affects the frictional response. The phase spaces have the universal
property that for any experiment in which a given object is put on a substrate
fashioned from a chosen material with a specified nature of contact,the
frictional behavior can be read off from a uniquely determined classifying map
on the control space of the experiment which takes values in the appropriate
phase space.
