The static friction coefficient, μ, is a central quantity in modeling
mechanical phenomena. However, experiments show that it is highly variable,
even for a single interface under carefully controlled experimental conditions.
Traditionally, this inconsistency is attributed to fluctuations in the real
area of contact between samples, AR. In this work, we perform a variety of
experimental protocols on three pairs of solid blocks while imaging the contact
interface and measuring μ. Using linear regression and images of the
interface taken prior to tangential loading, we predict the static friction
coefficient. Our model strongly outperforms two benchmarks, the Bowden and
Tabor picture (μ∝AR) and prediction using experimental variables,
indicating that a large portion of the observed variance in the initialization
of slip is encoded in the contact plane. We perform the same analysis using
only sub-sections of the interface, and find that regions as small as 1% of
the interface can still can beat both benchmarks. However, bigger sub-sections
of the interface, even when comprised of many small regions with bad individual
predictive power, outperform the best small regions alone, suggesting that the
interfacial state is not dependent on any single point, but is rather
distributed across the contact ensemble.Comment: 5 pages 4 figure