Can you solve the Italian Job cliffhanger?

IT IS one of the most memorable cliffhangers in film history – Sir Michael Caine working out how to rescue stacks of gold in a bus rocking precariously on the edge of a mountain.

If Caine and his gang try to move down the coach to reach the gold, their weight will topple it down the cliff, bringing the final scene of The Italian Job to a messy end. But Caine, who played master crook Charlie Croker in the 1969 film, optimistically declares in the last line, from the floor of the tipping bus: "Hang on lads – I've got an idea."

Now, leading scientists are appealing for the public to come up with a solution to the big-screen conundrum and save the robbers' gold. The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is inviting people to devise a successful ending to the heist to mark the film's 40th birthday next year.

The RSC wants to know how Croker and his team might have succeeded in unloading the gold from the far end of the finely-balanced bus without losing their own lives in the process.

The competition prize for the scientifically worked-out solution is a three-night stay for two in Turin, scene of the robbery.

Richard Pike, chief executive of the RSC, said: "We will never know if Croker came up with the answer to his team's dilemma, but we can at least try to work out how the potentially fatal task might have been managed in the desperate conditions."