Royal Society of Chemistry requests 'Italian Job' ending Science just has a way of trampling over the unexplained, whether this is welcomed or not. That even goes for the classic cliffhanger ending of the 1969 Michael Caine flick The Italian Job. The gang's six-wheeled coach teeters halfway over an Alpine cliff. The stolen gold slides towards the rear door and oblivion. Charlie …
Contestants should be made to assume that only items shown in the movie, or which can be reliably assume to exist in the butchered bus, can be used.
Otherwise, you could have them drive steel harpoons into the road with a pneumatic drill and anchor the bus with mono-filament wires.
A builders van laden with bricks arrives. The gang tell the two brickies that for a share in the gold they should load up the front of the bus with bricks. The gang then transfer the gold to the van and hot foot it away but not before pushing the bus off the cliff 29 or so minutes later.
Of course the moto of the film being that crime does not actually pay they convert the lot to stocks and lose it the next time some banker sneezes.
There was going to be a sequel and it started like this: They leave the engine on, the engine uses petrol, the petrol runs out, the back of the van is lightenened enough to send one man down and get the gold. The reason it was never made was that the film didn't do well enough in America.
That's what it said on the DVD of the Italian Job I had.
I could see the Royal Society of Physics (if it exists), coming up with this, but would have thought the Royal Society of Chemistry would rather play with with a more chemically interesting metal... It's not like Gold actually does much, or reacts with much.
Now if it was a load of sodium, I could see the Chemists rubbing their rubber gloves together at the idea of playing with that (whilst donning safety goggles).
I vote for having some crooks come along and steal the gold, followed by the minibus falling off the 'cliff' and being submerged in icy water, with (most of) the occupants using their diving gear to survive.
Wait... I've seen that one!
One of VERY few films where the yank remake was actually better than the original!
I think that there's been a lost negative somewhere in:
Contestants must assume that 30 minutes after Croker's last line, the bus will topple down the mountain. A 150-word minimum explanation, calculations, and a diagram must be included.
I can write a very easy explanation - they all get out of the bus and the gold sends the bus down the mountain, then they go down the mountain and pick it up again. The hard one would be recover the gold without the toppling, surely?
If the people who were at the end of the coach had picked up a bar each and taken it with them to the 'safe' end then the CoG would be in their favour.
Similarly if they had formed a line of people to pass the gold from the door end to the 'safe' end, same result.
The next step would be to get people (one at a time) to leave the coach and stand on the front bumper, so changing the CoG and allowing the last person/people to hopefully secure/move the gold.
Or they could all leave the coach and then go on a scavenger hunt after it's done it's falling down the cliff/ mountain stuff.
ttfn
a helicopter would be useful though
Surely this is a physics problem?
Other than getting back some of their more precious chemical element (which if Caine and Co could do, they wouldn't see any of it anyway), what interest do the RSC have in this?
Need a "Where's the Chemistry Angle?" icon now. Bugger. Oh well plan B
Mine's the lab coat
Here's a still:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/11/27/ItalianJob460.jpg
They should all take their keks off, tie them together to make a lasoo and start hoiking piles of gold back to the land side end. The balance would shift and they could start climbing out the front doors, taking most of the gold with them. That stack weighs MUCH more than the people put together.
Love it. Love the movie. I'm in.
And just to let you wannabee Brunel types what you are up against my plan involves using a derivative of the engine implemented by Diades of Pella (Mr.) at Tyre, 7000 kerats of Thailands finest hemp yarn and an ineffible ability to look on the bright side.
See you in Turin - I'll be the one in the armour plated Land Rover.
OK how about this?
1/ all the people go to the extreme front of the coach (and stay still) - counterbalancing it.
2/ They make a rope of belts ties clothes etc
3/ The lightest one slithers forward (alone) and attached the rope to the gold.
4/ The people pull the gold back to the front.
5/ One person (fully clothed) goes to find a farmer with a tractor to pull the coach back.
6/ Resume journey.
Plan B
Let the gold fall out.
Rush off the coach and recover the gold before the caribineri turn up.
Scarper!
or Plan C
Learn to fly...fast!
They've already shown that they can get a bloke almost to the gold before it gets close to toppling. Just make everyone gets really far back, then the lightest person jumps out and fetches rocks from the nearby road (there are plenty). Pile these up in the drivers' cab to stabilise the coach. Then the light bloke gets back in, fetches the gold and they have enough weight now to get everyone and at least 90% of the gold out in shifts. Leave the rocks in the coach as they're not worth that much...
Step 1. Charlie lets all the gold be lost out of the back of the bus into the Alps
Step 2. There is not much loss because Gordon Brown has sold far more, after telling everyone was he going to, the genius, so gold isn't worth anything.
Step 3. Gordon Brown buys into the criminal fraternity taking a 28% stake in return for an investment to the value of the gold.
Step 4. Gordon also lends the Italian Government 20 Billion Million Trillion Lira (7 euros fifty, to replace the cost of the stolen gold.)
Step 5. All this has cost nobody anything, due to the Gordonomics argument that he's not putting tax up after the election.
Step 6. Gordon is announced a genius. The electorate soon have to pay a new breathing levy, which is not a tax, but is a "levy" to compensate for the CO2 people breathe out.
Step 7. Tessa Jowell suggests that if we all "hope enough" criminals will realise "their methods are unfair, and they'll think about how bad they've been."
Step 8. Harriet Harman complains about Benny Hill molesting women, and the actresses not being paid the same as Charlie.
The coach teeters on the cliff. The gold slides towards the rear.
Since the mass of that much gold would somewhat exceed the mass of anything available to counterbalance it, the fact that the bloody thing didn't plunge over the edge when it moved rearwards indicates one of two things. 1) The thing's nowhere near as unstable as it appears to be, so getting the stuff should just be a matter of walking down the other end, ignoring the unsettling swinging motion or 2) it's all artistic license so the whole thing's a pointless load of cobblers anyway.
What's the point of trying to come up with a scientific solution to a problem which has already caused the laws of physics to bugger off in disgust.?
No helicopters allowed? A classic "where's my flying car?" moment, if ever there was.
Michael Caine already blurted it out on a previous Jonathon Ross talkshow.
The engine kept running, reducing the weight in the petrol tank at the back and allowing someone to crawl along and tie something to the gold-carrying pallets. They drag it forward, get the coach going again and carry on.
Then the Mob turn up again, chase them, grab the gold and so begins the sequel......
...that they should let the gold take the plunge, at which point the bus would become a lot more stable. If the road in question is the Stelvio pass as it appears to be then it shouldn't be too hard to access the gold from further down the hill. Quite how they do that without a vehicle I don't know.
Having said that the ending is one of the many things that makes it such a good film and something that wouldn't happen in any American financed film today (yes it was) even if it did only cost £4m to make. Actually resolving the issue would ruin the film, collapsing, as it would the wave form (could we introduce a cat in a box to the plot?). Which is why true fans of the film were always against a rumoured sequel.
The Royal Society has succeeded in bringing to attention a curious aspect of being human that is often overlooked. We often seem happier to engage in hypothetical discussions about something that we know only exists in our imagination than to engage with reality.
Hmm, I must do some work...
That's exactly what I always hated about the film:
your bus is unstable and leaning backwards, so the gold slides merrily further, moving the centre of gravity even further, yet not toppling. Very weird.
But it's not necessarily that false, the feeling of instability; with each rocking, the bus may slide a half-inch towards doom. Thus giving you indeed a different situation each minute, and disaster in 30.
I'm slightly worried about the original plan: burning up so much fuel in 30minutes (well, 28 + 2min for getting the gold out) while in idle?? (If you rev hard it will vibrate you off the cliff.) How's that jalopy going to get across the alps, or even across Torino, on a regular day? What mileage.
"The Benny Hill character turns up with a bus load of fat women. Next, they .... Oh, hell, you get the idea."
"Yes, clearly this should be handled by the Royal Society for Self-Preservation."
Excellent, both of you.
Wondering what's next - perhaps the Royal Forest and Bird Society will come up with a prize for an answer to what happens to the shotguns from "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"...
I like the "The Benny Hill character turns up with a bus load of fat women. Next, they .... Oh, hell, you get the idea." thing (what happened to his character anyway?)
Anyway how did this challenge even come to be? - the result of a some top egg-heads drinking down the pub talking about films when one says "Itallian job - great film! but what happens after the credits roll at the end?" & the others reply "erm......" or did it come about after one of them made the same mistake I did of watching the film while their 14 daughter was there & triying to answer her "but what happen to them?" nagging
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