LONDON?It is one of the most memorable cliffhanger endings in movie history, but now the problem of how Michael Caine and his gang can salvage the gold in "The Italian Job" has been solved.

Caine's character Charlie Croker famously says: "Hang on a minute lads -- I've got an idea," in the last line of the 1969 classic, as their bus teeters on the edge of a precipice in the Italian Alps.

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) launched a competition to suggest how they could get the gold haul, tantalizingly out of reach at the back of the bus, without sending the vehicle and themselves plunging into the void.

The only stipulation was that the gang of thieves -- whose vehicle spins half-over the edge on a mountain road as they head for Switzerland following a spectacular bank robbery in Rome -- coud not take more than 30 minutes.

Some 2,000 suggestions came in, and the winner was John Godwin, a 39-year-old information technology manager from Godalming, southwest of London.

This was his solution: first, the gang members need to smash the windows -- outwards at the back and inwards at the front, to shift the balance slightly in their favor.

Their combined weight is the only thing stopping the gold at the back pulling the bus over the edge.

Then one of the robbers should climb out through a broken window -- and let down the tires at the front, helping to stabilize the vehicle by reducing the bounce effect of the wheels on the road.

With the bus more favorably balanced, Croker could then use an access panel to get to the fuel tank, near the rear of the vehicle, and remove its drainage plug -- allowing some 140 kilos of fuel out.

The shift in balance would then allow one gang member to get off the bus, and collect rocks to further weigh down the front end -- so that Croker could creep forward and rescue the bullion, bar by bar.

"We've been overwhelmed by the response to our competition, and are delighted to have found such a deserving winner," said Richard Pike, chief executive of the RSC.

"Mr. Godwin's entry is just the kind of practical thinking Croker would have used -- but he ably demonstrates the science behind the idea as well," he added.

The only remaining problem, of course, would be what to do next -- given that the bus would have no fuel and two flat tires, and was in any case still hanging over the edge of a cliff, a long way from anywhere in the Italian Alps.