Ballast (disambiguation)

Ballast is any material used to provide stability to a vehicle or structure. It may also refer to:

Objects

• Ballast tank, a device used on ships and submarines and other submersibles to control buoyancy and stability
• Ballast weights, metallic plates used to bring auto racing vehicles up to the minimum mandated weight
• Electrical ballast, used to stabilize the current flow in lamps
• Sailing ballast, ship's ballast, used to weigh a ship down
• Track ballast, the layer of crushed rock or gravel upon which railway track is laid
• Ballast carried aboard an aircraft, for example:
  • in gliding to increase speed and/or adjust the aircraft's center of gravity
  • in a balloon as a buoyancy compensator
• Ballast tractor, a heavy haulage road vehicle designed to pull or push heavy or exceptionally large loads

Places

• Ballast, Coevorden, a village in the northeastern Netherlands
• Ballast Head, a headland on Kangaroo Island, Australia
  • Ballast Head, South Australia, a locality
• Ballast Point, a neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, United States

Other

• Ballast (film), a 2008 film about the effect of one man's suicide on three people
• Ballast (website), a Canadian news and cultural website
• Ballast, a 1967 story of The Railway Series book Small Railway Engines