Pontoon bridge using a single 'o'. The U.S. military differentiated between the bridge itself ("ponton") and the floats used to provide buoyancy ("pontoon"). The original word was derived from Old French "ponton", from Latin "ponto" ("ferryboat"), from "pons" ("bridge"). When designing a pontoon bridge, the civil engineer must take into consideration the Archimedes' principle: Each pontoon can support a load equal to the mass of the water that it displaces. This load includes the mass of the bridge and the pontoon itself. If the maximum load of a bridge section is exceeded, one or more pontoons become submerged. Flexible connections have to
Pontoon (card game) Australia was comparable in popularity to Blackjack, so there are more Pontoon tables available in Australian casinos than Spanish 21 tables in American casinos. Unfortunately, in response to the release of the book "The Pro's Guide To Spanish 21 and Australian Pontoon" by Katarina Walker, Burswood Casino in Perth has withdrawn the game from the main floor and Crown Casino, Melbourne, have withdrawn the game from their VIP Mahogany Room and introduced continuous shuffling machines to some of the pontoon games in the main hall. Any hand-shuffled or automatically shuffled pontoon games at Crown Casino have penetrations below 75%, rendering