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) the rules. The computer-generated Pontoon basic strategy and house edge tables below are reproduced from "The Pro's Guide to Spanish 21 and Australian Pontoon", with permission of the author, Katarina Walker. Pontoon strategy is far more difficult than Blackjack, however, casinos do not generally object to people using strategy charts at the table. Pontoon strategy is very similar to Spanish 21 strategy, but there are some crucial differences, mainly due to the no-hole-card rule, and the limitations on soft doubling. Pontoon does, on average, have a lower house edge than its American counterparts because of the no-hole-card rule, which means