The stick racing game is called Pooh sticks (or ‘poohsticks’) after the lovable bear Winnie-the-Pooh (or Pooh Bear). The bear is the creation of English author A. A. Milne, who wrote the first story in 1926. in later years the bear become commodified by Walt Disney, appearing in animated adventures.
The game of Pooh sticks was first played by the author’s son, Christopher Milne, on a footbridge across a tributary of the River Medway, located in Posingford Wood, by Cotchford Farm in England. A.A. Milne used the game as a centerpiece in one of the Pooh books – The House at Pooh Corner (1928.)
The wooden bridge is now a tourist attraction, and many visitors play the game there using sticks gathered in nearby woodland.
As to the game, according to the organizers of the annual World Poohsticks Championships:
It is a simple sport which may be played on any bridge over running water; each player drops a stick on the upstream side of a bridge and the one whose stick first appears on the downstream side is the winner.
So far, so good; but is there an art to winning? This week a formula for winning at poohsticks was unveiled. This is based around a formula by Dr Rhys Morgan, from the Royal Academy of Engineering, who has included it in his new book Poohstickopedia.
The formula, the BBC notes “uses area, density and a drag coefficient to help competitors find the perfect twig.” It is mathematically expressed as:
PP = A x I x Cd
Where:
PP is Perfect Poohstick
A is Cross Sectional Area
I is density of the stick
Cd is the drag coefficient of the stick
Digital Journal has been unable to verify if the said formula works. That said, there’s one way to find out…
