The Italian Job
Posted on: November 1, 2008
- In: fun stuff | italian job | italian job solution | links | mechanics
- 7 Comments
So, the Royal Society of Chemistry (who, by the way, have excellent initials) are looking for a solution to the problem at the end of the Italian Job.
Um, isn’t this pretty easy? The person in the middle first needs to go and join his mates. Then, once the bus (Is it a bus or a lorry? Never seen the film) is stable, they need to add more weight to that end of the bus. Even small amounts of earth and pebbles will make a difference, since they are at a fair distance from the pivot and since the vehicle is clearly almost stable without. Eventually they’ll have added enough to allow one person to get off the bus and go and find heavier rocks. And soon there will be enough to keep the bus stable while one person goes to the other end and brings the gold back. Once they’ve brought one chunk (ingot? bar? Haven’t seen the film, dunno.) back, the balance will have shifted sufficiently that there will be no difficulty with the rest.
7 Responses to "The Italian Job"
November 2, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Of course, that assumes that you can reach the ground at the back of the bus, maybe there’s an opening window there you can then let someone down while holding their heels…
But then that assumes that you can’t just move a seat or some luggage back and achieve the same effect.
But that’s films for you, they tend (if they are as funny as the original Italian Job was) to be a touch disconnected from reality, like cartoons with live actors ;0
November 13, 2008 at 1:21 pm
OK, well, this is pretty much the solution I had. But I also have the advantage of being a big old fan of the film since I was a wee nipper (little kid) back in the 70′s…
So, based on the film knowledge. Here are the main advantages;
1. Its a bus, but it was specially designed to allow the rear to open like container doors.
2. They are stuck in the mountains, over the edge of a narrow Italian Alpine road. Fortunately its the foothills so cold and snow are not issues.
This means that there are a ready supply of rocks and stones. My knowledge of 1960′s coaches is limited, so I do not know if they have the luggage containers underneath the seating area, so I will assume they are not there.
Unfortunately, most coaches have their engines at the the back here in Europe, so they also have the engine weight to deal with as well.
So where does that leave us… a front of the bus with stones in it, and a precarious balance with the gold bars (in small cages of 6 I think) balanced EXACTLY at the rear of the bus…
I think the best solution here is actually to counter-balance the gang and allow them to get off, they can then push the bus over the edge of the road (because they ALSO have to evade the Mafia and Italian police having just stolen the gold), and a coach blocking the road might draw them in faster.
The plan should hopefully see the gold flung out of the rear access doors and through smashed windows as the coach crashes, and the little security cages should at least help reduce its wide spread in the fall. They then need to decend the mountain by foot, collect the gold, hole up somewhere safe while some of the gang crosses the border into Switzerland and hires a recovery vehicle.
Job done. But you are right, its far closer to physics than Chemistry…
January 27, 2009 at 1:50 pm
You could never shatter a toughened glass window of a coach with a shoe,that’s why they sell escape tools to cars as the windows also will not break easily only from a very localised blow i.e. with a pointed tool .
If the fuel tank were accessible via a hatch in the floor then it would be just a small hatch to get at the fuel pickup and sender for the fuel level with no means of draining the tank only by removing the pipes and siphoning it with would involve the use of tools.
If they let the tyres down to ‘stabilise’ the vehicle the flat tyres would then be lighter as an inflated tyre is heavier than a flat one,as an example the weight of air and moisture in it on top of your head if 15.4 lbs per square inch.
Smashing the front windows would also be impossible with a shoe but even if you did and knocked the glass inside the coach that would also make the front lighter due to the weight of glass moving closer to the pivot point.
The solution would be to get everyone as far forward as possible even to working around the outside of the coach standing on the front bumper.
then the lightest one on there crawl to the gold remove one bar and slide it to the front of the coach,repeat that a few times and it would get more stable with every one .
Perhaps the royal society of physics would have been a better place to vet the results .
Regards
February 12, 2009 at 1:36 am
Look, the solution to the Italian Job is simple. hadn’t heard of it till recently and whilst I was mulling over some questions to set a grade 11 Physics class, the answer came to me, so I looked online to see the schematics of the vehicle and the situation inside.
This is what I observed.
1. The gold is at the back of the vehicle, hanging over a cliff.
2. All but one person is at the front of the bus
3. The person not at the front of the bus is close to the gold.
4. The front window on the bus is wound down.
This is simple a problem of moments of a force. Basic Physics: sum of the clockwise moments = sum of the anticlockwise moments.
moments = force (weight) x perpendicular distance from the pivot to the line of action of the force.
The person close to the gold is adding to the moments due to the gold (at best he is at the pivot, contributing to neither clockwise nor anticlockwise moments), thus he is part of the problem and not the solution. However, he is the solution. In that situation, the bus is at equilibrium, since the two moments cancel out.
If he moves towards the front of the bus, he will add to the moments due to the thieves and thus the motion equilibrium shifts towards the front of the bus.
The lightest person can then climb out the window, without tipping the balance of the equilibrium towards the back of the bus. He can then gather rocks to place in the front of the bus. As more weight is added, more people can climb out the window and get rocks, decreasing the time taken to stabilise the bus.
They can then go hijack a vehicle and use some ropes to pull the bus off the edge of the cliff and make a getaway.
Simple enough I think….:D and with my solution, no need to remove any of the gold from the bus, or waste fuel, or leave the mafia to get the gold.
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November 1, 2008 at 9:56 pm
That’ll be why it’s the Royal Society of Chemistry and not the Institute of Physics, then…