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Flotation   Listen
noun
Flotation  n.  
1.
The act, process, or state of floating.
2.
The science of floating bodies.
3.
(Com. & Finance) Act of financing, or floating, a commercial venture or an issue of bonds, stock, or the like.
Center of flotation. (Shipbuilding)
(a)
The center of any given plane of flotation.
(b)
More commonly, the middle of the length of the load water line.
Plane of flotation, or Line of flotation, the plane or line in which the horizontal surface of a fluid cuts a body floating in it. See Bearing, n., 9 (c).
Surface of flotation (Shipbuilding), the imaginary surface which all the planes of flotation touch when a vessel rolls or pitches; the envelope of all such planes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Flotation" Quotes from Famous Books



... He leaned across the desk and spoke with bitter intensity. "You're high-grading and you should be using a flotation process." ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones

... a horizontal plan, I use an ordinary rudder fixed on the back of the stern-post, and with one wheel and some tackle to steer by. But I can also make the Nautilus rise and sink, and sink and rise, by a vertical movement by means of two inclined planes fastened to its sides, opposite the centre of flotation, planes that move in every direction, and that are worked by powerful levers from the interior. If the planes are kept parallel with the boat, it moves horizontally. If slanted, the Nautilus, according ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... to be delicately built, with a specific gravity near that of the sea-water, with adaptations, such as projecting filaments, which help flotation, and with capacities of rising and sinking according to the surrounding conditions. Many of them are luminescent, and many of them are very inconspicuous in the water owing to their transparency or their bluish colour. In both cases the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... inflated by blowing through the tube formed by the skin of the limb; the inflation completed, this was suddenly twisted round and tied. The skin thus filled looked like an exaggerated water-skin; the power of flotation was so great, that about a dozen men hung on to the legs of the tetel, and to each other's shoulders, when we launched it in the river. This plan is well worthy of the attention of military men; troops, when on service, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... to allotment," he said. "I warned you that the applications for our stock were quite insufficient to warrant the flotation of the concern at the time, but you apparently lost your heads over those specimens, and you overruled me. Now it's unpleasantly evident that we cannot expect to go on much longer, and I venture to predict a voluntary liquidation during the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... cargo was piled up on land, they appeared like towering fortresses. Two-thirds of the hull, usually hidden in the water, were now in evidence, showing the bright red of their curved shell. Only the keel kept itself in the water. The upper third, that which remained visible above the line of flotation in ordinary times, was now a simple black cornice that capped the long purple walls. The masts and smokestacks diminished by this transformation appeared to belong to ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... treat this problem of aerial flotation as if it were of the nature of a miracle—something not to be explained. Explanations which have been advanced have, it is true, been in many cases altogether untenable. For instance, some have asserted that the albatross, the condor, and other birds which float for a long ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... in the spring of the year, the three men who were known as the Three Black Crows called at the office of "The President of the Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company," situated in an obscure street near San Francisco's water-front. They were Strokher, the tall, blond, solemn, silent Englishman; Hardenberg, the American, dry of humour, shrewd, resourceful, who bargained like a Vermonter and sailed a schooner like a Gloucester ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... in New York City, headed by J.P. Morgan & Company, was negotiating with the British Treasury authorities for the flotation in the United States of $100,000,000 of the new British war loan was announced in the newspapers on July 3, 1915. Mr. Morgan's firm had handled contracts to furnish war munitions to the Allies, amounting ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... of a vessel below the plank-shear. The line of flotation which is formed by the water upon her sides when she sits upright with her provisions, stores, and ballast, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... will of the operator, but make respectable progress in whatever direction he may desire to go. The glider, it must be remembered, is not steerable, except to a limited extent, and moves only in one direction—against the wind. Besides this its power of flotation—suspension in ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... people resented it in a prompt and highly practical way. They oversubscribed the six billion loan. Most of them, especially the smaller subscribers, doubled their subscriptions in the last two days of the time allotted for the flotation. October 7th, President Wilson answered Prince Max's ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... in fishes is a good one, because it shows us clearly the highly important fact that an organ originally constructed for one purpose, namely flotation, may be converted into one for a wholly different purpose, namely respiration. The swimbladder has, also, been worked in as an accessory to the auditory organs of certain fish, or, for I do not know {191} which view ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... any particular form; but it seems to me probable that if the 'P.S.P.' continues its downward course as indicated by Mr. Jones, then, unless everything else worsens with it, so that it might maintain its relative flotation in a general confusion, it must fall to be disesteemed and repudiated, and give place to one or more other dialects which, by having better preserved the distinctions of pronunciation, will be not only more convenient vehicles of intercourse, but more truthful and intelligible interpreters ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... was that of a great plain, over which the sun passed by day, and beneath which it travelled through the hours of night. The movement of the sun was supposed to be that of floating on the heavenly ocean, figured by its being in a boat, which was probably an expression for its flotation. The elaboration of the nature of the regions through which the sun passed at night essentially belongs to the Ra theology, and only recognises the kingdom of Osiris by placing it in one of the hours of night. The old conception of the dim ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie



Words linked to "Flotation" :   center of flotation, flotation device, floatation



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