How to keep a bus from falling off a cliff
// January 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Creativity, In the Media, Retro
How do you keep a bus full of gold from falling off a cliff, and taking you with it? That was the physics problem presented at the end of the original Italian Job. (The one with Michael Caine, not Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch).
What are the ingredients here? Michael Caine, a caper movie, humour, some smashing mod clothing, and an intractable science problem to end the movie.
You see, Caine and the rest of the crew had used 3 Minis to steal the gold from a bank in Turin, and had driven the Minis into the back of a 1967 Bedford Coach. After unloading the gold from the cars, they had pushed the Minis out into the Italian Alps. Unfortunately, some poor driving led to half the coach hanging over a very steep Italian hillside, with no seeming solution for getting both the gold and the gang off the bus safely.
Thanks to the Royal Society of Chemistry and John Godwin, we now have a solution! Mr. Godwin submitted the winning entry in the RSC’s contest to solve the decades-old physics challenge. And it’s quite intricate:
- Break the third set of windows, using the heel of a shoe, outward.
- Then reach around and break the second set of windows inward, so that the weight of the glass remains in the bus
- Lower a team member from each side to deflate the tires, thereby lessening the “springiness” of the bus and making it more stable
- Drain the remaining gas from the bus by accessing the service panel directly under Charlie Croker
- Once all this has taken place, it should be safe for one gang member to leave the bus and pass rocks to his colleagues, thereby balancing the bus and allowing for the gold to be slowly removed.
I think the runner-up’s solution is far more exciting:
- Cut the fuel line so it leaks onto the road asphalt just at the fulcrum – the spot where the bus is teetering on the cliffside.
- Ignite the fuel
- Effectively secure the bus to the cliffside by melting the asphalt.
You’re really missing something if you don’t look over the completed contest entries – there’s a hell of a lot of math, physics and chemistry in each of them!
I have a particular fondness for the original Italian Job, and I almost lost my mind when I heard Eddie Izzard riff on the movie:
Why Eddie Izzard loves the Italian Job:
