A method and apparatus for determining the contact angle of a droplet of test liquid on a substrate surface. The apparatus includes a test article support plate, a pipette for depositing a droplet of test liquid onto a substrate surface of the test article, and a lamp for projecting an image of the deposited droplet onto a projection screen with a base line of the image positioned on a horizontal axis line of the screen. The screen further has a protractor scale calibrated to read twice the normal angular value, and a rotatable reference line which upon positioning through a contact point of the droplet with the substrate surface and an apex point of the droplet farthest removed from the substrate surface directly indicates the value of the contact angle of the on the protractor scale.