in 1964, william zisman published an article in the acs publications on the "relation of the equilibrium contact angle to liquid and solid constitution". it was in this article where he used what we call today as the zisman plot. the zisman plot is used to very quickly give a quantitative measurement of wettability, also known as the critical surface tension, γ , of a solid surface by measuring the liquid contact angle as shown in figure 1. taking the cosine of said angle and then graphing it against the surface tension of the liquid wetting the solid substrate yields the critical surface tension. wettability is a measure of how well a liquid spreads and how complete the contact of the liquid is across the surface of a solid interface. a small contact angle indicates good wettability, while a large contact angle indicates poor wettability. the critical surface tension is the highest liquid surface tension that can completely wet a specific solid surface. for adhesive bonding complete wetting is used to maximize the adhesive joint strength.