Bear Necessities: Top engineer works out winning 'poohsticks' formula

A top scientist has worked out a formula to boost your chances of winning poohsticks.

Dr Rhys Morgan from the Royal Academy of Engineers claims that sticks that are tubby, long, fairly heavy with a lot of bark to catch the flow of the river with boost your chances of winning the game:

PP (perfect poohstick) = A x Ï?x Cd, where A is cross-sectional area of the stick, Ï? is the density and Cd is the drag coefficient.

The formula disproves the views of more than half of Britons (57%) who believe Poohsticks is a game of sheer luck.

A poohsticks competitor at the 6th World Pooh Sticks Championship at little Wittenham in Oxfordshire in 2009. Credit: PA

For the un-initiated, poohsticks is a game where competitors drop sticks into river upstream off a bridge and see which appears downstream first.

Stick-racing like this was first mentioned in AA Milne's timeless classic, The House At Pooh Corner in 1928.

There's more to a game of poohsticks than sheer luck. Credit: PA

The research, commissioned to celebrate the release of The Poohsticks Handbook: A Poohstickopedia - a new book featuring Winnie the Pooh and friends, written by comedy writer Mark Evans and illustrated by Mark Burgess - reveals the secrets to finding the perfect Poohstick according to a top scientist, and names the best places in the country to play.

Meanwhile, VisitEngland has compiled a list of the best Poohsticks bridges alongside the original Poohsticks Bridge in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex.

12 of the best poohstick bridges in England. Credit: Visit England

Rebecca Lowe, head of PR at VisitEngland, said: