Bridge (disambiguation)

Transportation

• Terrestrial: A bridge is a structure built so that a road, railway, or other transportation route can cross above an obstacle such as a river, valley, or another road.

• Ships: the bridge of a ship is an area or room where the ship's navigational controls and other essential equipment related to ship operations are housed and operated. It is so called because it once was a bridge between paddlewheels on either side of early steamboats. This new vantage point was deemed so convenient that it was retained after the paddlewheels were superseded.

Dentistry

A bridge is a dental prosthesis used in place of missing teeth and may be removable or permanently attached.

A typical removable bridge will contain a simulated tooth and wire hooks that grip the adjoining teeth.

A typical permanent bridge will span a missing tooth by removing the original surface the adjacent teeth and cementing to them a common crown shaped to the original surfaces of the two mounting teeth and the missing tooth between. This method is generally used only for the replacement of the second premolar and molar teeth (the grinding teeth behind the canine (eye) teeth. The recipient of such a bridge must be careful to clean well under this prothesis.

Instead of a bridge, a partial plate, containing a simulation of the missing tooth may be used.

Game

• Bridge is also the name of a card game, short for contract bridge, auction bridge, or duplicate bridge.

Music

• On a musical string instrument, the bridge is the device which anchors the strings at the body end of the strings.
• In song writing, a bridge is an interlude that connects two parts of that song, building a harmonic connection between those parts.

Electronics and computers

• Electronics (1): a Wheatstone bridge is a diamond shaped arrangement of resistors, useful in comparing resistances to high standards of accuracy. If alternating currents are applied and a device used to measure alternating currents is substituted, a similarly arranged bridge may be used to proportionally compare capacitors or inductors.
• Electronics (2): a bridge rectifier is a diamond shaped configuration of diodes used to convert alternating current to direct current.
• Telecommunications: a bridge is an electronic device used to connect two segments of a computer network (combining two networks) or of a telephone network (to support multi-party conference call on telephone). See network bridge.
• Computer science: bridge pattern is the name of a design pattern for computer programming introduced by the Gang of Four in their book Design Patterns. Its use is to separate an abstraction and its actual implementation into separate class hierarchies.

Finance

• A bridge, short for bridge loan is the financing for a construction project that is replaced by (paid off with the proceeds of) a mortgage on the property once it is built. It is also used in the financing of new or expanding corporations to keep the company operating between rounds of private placement stock sales (venture capital) or pending an initial public offering (IPO). A bridge loan may also be a short-term loan to cover a gap in time between two long-term loans.