Float (nautical)

Floats (also called pontoons) are airtight hollow structures, similar to pressure vessels, designed to provide buoyancy in water. Their principal applications are in watercraft hulls and aircraft floats, floating pier and pontoon bridge construction, and marine engineering applications such as salvage.

Use

Floats make up the multipart hulls of catamarans and trimarans and provide buoyancy for floatplanes and seaplanes. They are used in pontoon bridges, floating piers, and floats anchored to the seabed for recreation or dockage. They are also used in shipbuilding and marine salvage, often deployed uninflated then pressurized to raise a sunken object.

Construction

Pontoons for marine industrial uses are usually fabricated from steel plate and sheet. Pontoons as parts of watercraft and aircraft are more typically molded in glass-reinforced plastic. Before the 1970s, glass-reinforced plastic was rare; older techniques include those of traditional wooden boatbuilding as well as plywood over wooden ribs or metal sheets over metal ribs (aluminium or steel), reflecting the prevailing practice in aircraft and boats. In model building, floats can easily be carved out of solid blocks or laminated sheets of foam.

Ice cream float

An ice cream float or soda (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa and East Asia), coke float (United Kingdom), root beer float (Canada) or spider (Australia and New Zealand), is a beverage that consists of ice cream in either a soft drink or in a mixture of flavored syrup and carbonated water.

Origins

The ice cream float was invented by Robert McCay Green in Philadelphia, PA, in 1874 during the sesquicentennial celebration. The traditional story is that, on a particularly hot day, Mr. Green ran out of cold ice for the flavored drinks he was selling and used vanilla ice cream from a neighboring vendor, thus inventing a new drink.

His own account, published in Soda Fountain magazine in 1910, states that while operating a soda fountain at the Franklin Institute's semicentennial celebration in Philadelphia in 1874, he wanted to create a new treat to attract customers away from another vendor who had a fancier, bigger soda fountain. After some experimenting, he decided to combine ice cream and soda water. During the celebration, he sold vanilla ice cream with soda water and a choice of 16 different flavored syrups. The new treat was a sensation and soon other soda fountains began selling ice cream floats. Green's will instructed that "Originator of the Ice Cream Soda" was to be engraved on his tombstone.

Floats (drink)

Floats are a beverage line introduced by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group in January 2008. Two flavors are available, A&W Float and Sunkist Float. The purpose of the concept is to mimic the flavor of an ice cream float of a given soda. Thus, the A&W flavor is intended to taste like a root beer float, while the latter is comparable to an orange creamsicle or Sunkist float.

The drinks are creamy in nature and contain little carbonation, and no caffeine. Ingredients include skim milk, cream, and nitrous oxide to create foam. While it is recommended that they be served chilled, refrigeration of Floats is not mandatory. Available in 11.5-ounce, vintage soda-shop-inspired glass bottles with twist-off tops, Floats are sold at major US retail, grocery, and convenience stores.

Marketing

The product's first press release was issued on January 2, 2008, which included bottle design photos, suggested retail prices, and other information.

In the press release, Andrew Springate, vice president of marketing, stated: