S01E13 - The Bat Jar Conjecture

No: 13  |  Season: 1   Episode: 13  |  Air Date: 2008-04-21  |  Runtime: mins

Good afternoon, and welcome to today's physics bowl practice round. I'm Penny, and I'll be your host, because apparently I didn't have anything else to do on a Saturday afternoon, and isn't that just a little sad?

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Summary

Sheldon becomes so intent on demonstrating his intellectual superiority over the other guys that they kick him off the Physics Bowl team and replace him with his nemesis, Leslie.

Director and Writers

Director: Mark Cendrowski
Writers: Story by: Stephen Engel & Jennifer Glickman / Teleplay by: Bill Prady & Robert Cohen

Script

Script: S01E13 - The Bat Jar Conjecture

Quotes

Dr. Gablehauser: First question. For ten points: What is the isospin singlet partner of the pi-zero meson?
(Leonard and Sheldon ring in)
Dr. Gablehauser: PMS?
Leonard: The eta meson.
Dr. Gablehauser: Correct.
(the audience applauds)
Sheldon: Formal protest.
Dr. Gablehauser: On what grounds?
Sheldon: The Velcro on my wrist brace caught on my shirt.
Dr. Gablehauser: Denied.

Leonard: Do I have to quote Spock's dying words to you? The needs of the many...
Howard: ...outweigh the needs of the few...
Sheldon: ...or the one. Damn it, I'll do it.
(does Vulcan salute)

Leonard: How do you know these things?
Penny: I go outside and I talk to people.

Penny: Tweety bird tawt he taw a what?
Sheldon: Romulan.
Penny: (sarcastically) Yes, he tawt he taw a Romulan.

Penny: Isn't a guy who can't speak in front of women gonna hold you back a little?
Leonard: Oh, he'll be okay once the women are mixed into the crowd. He only has a problem when they're one on one and smell nice.
Penny: Oh, thanks Raj. It's vanilla oil.
Leonard: I was actually the one who noticed.

Leonard: Come on, we need a 4-person team. We're 4 people.
Sheldon: By that reasoning, we should also play bridge, hold up a chuppah, and enter the olympic bobsled competition.

Leslie Winkle: Wait. You are going up against Sheldon Cooper?
Howard: Yes.
Leslie Winkle: That arrogant, misogynistic East Texas doorknob that told me I should abandon my work with high energy particles for laundry and child bearing?
Leonard: She's in.

Dr. Gablehauser: (after Sheldon declines to accept Dmitri the janitor's correct answer as their official answer) Therefore, your winner is...
Leonard: (Stops him) Hold on a second.
(Stands up and faces him, admonishingly)
Leonard: Sheldon, is proving that you are single-handedly smarter than everyone else so important that you would rather lose by yourself than win as part of a team?
Sheldon: I don't understand the question.
Leonard: (Shrugs, then to Dr. Gablehauser) Alright, continue.
Dr. Gablehauser: The winner is PMS!
(They celebrate to Queen's "We Are the Champions")

Sheldon: You want me to use my intelligence in a tawdry competition? Would you ask Picasso to play Pictionary? Would you ask Noah Webster to play Boggle? Would you ask Jacques Cousteau to play Go Fish?

Sheldon: (discussing their team name for the Physics Bowl) Teams are traditionally named after fierce creatures, thus intimidating one's opponent.
Raj: Then we could be the "Bengal Tigers."
Sheldon: Poor choice. Gram for gram, no animal exceeds the relative fighting strength of the army ant.
Raj: Maybe so. But you can't incinerate a Bengal tiger with a magnifying glass.

Howard: Okay, we're going to need a strong fourth for our team.
Raj: You know who's apparently very smart, is the girl who played TV's Blossom. She got a PhD in neuroscience or something.
Leonard: Raj, we're not getting TV's Blossom to join our physics bowl team.
Raj: How about the girl from the Wonder Years?
Howard: Gentlemen, I believe I've found the solution to all our problems.
Leonard: We can't ask Leslie Winkle.
Raj: Why? Because you slept together and when she was done with you she discarded you like last night's chutney?
Leonard: Yes.

Penny: Good afternoon, and welcome to today's physics bowl practice round. I'm Penny, and I'll be your host, because apparently I didn't have anything else to do on a Saturday afternoon, and isn't that just a little sad? Gentlemen, are you ready?

Sheldon: What rat have you recruited to the U.S.S. Sinking Ship?
Leslie Winkle: (Behind him) Hello, Sheldon.
Sheldon: (Turns around) Leslie Winkle.
Leslie Winkle: Yeah. Leslie Winkle. The answer to the question, "Who made Sheldon Cooper cry like a little girl?"
Sheldon: Yes, well... I'm polymerized tree sap and you're an inorganic adhesive, so whatever verbal projectile you launch in my direction is reflected off of me, returns on its original trajectory and adheres to you.
Leslie Winkle: (sarcastically) Oh, ouch.

Dr. Gablehauser: AA, I need your official answer.
Sheldon: (regarding Dmitri ringing in) Well, it's not what he said.
Dr. Gablehauser: Than what is it?
Sheldon: I want a different question.
Dr. Gablehauser: You can't have a different question.
Sheldon: Formal protest.
Dr. Gablehauser: Denied.
Sheldon: Informal protest.
Dr. Gablehauser: Denied. I need your official answer.
Sheldon: No. I decline to provide one.
Dr. Gablehauser: Well, that's too bad, because the answer your teammate gave was correct.
Sheldon: That's your opinion.

Howard: Oooh... more details about the new Star Trek film. There's going to be a scene depicting Spock's birth.
Raj: I'd be more interested in a scene depicting Spock's conception.
Sheldon: Oh, please. For Vulcans, mating - or if you will, pon farr... is an extremely private matter.
Leonard: Still, I'd like to know the details. His mother was human, his father was Vulcan. They couldn't just 'conceive'.
Howard: Maybe they had to go to a clinic. Can you imagine Spock's dad in a little room with a copy of "Pointy Ears and Shapely Rears"?
Raj: How come on Star Trek everybody's private parts are the same? No alien lady ever told Captain Kirk, "Hey, get your thing out of my nose".

(regarding the equation in the final question)
Raj: Holy crap!
Leonard: What the hell is that?
Howard: It looks like something they found on the ship at Roswell.

Leonard: You're off the team.
Sheldon: Why?
Leonard: Because you're taking all the fun out of it.
Sheldon: I'm sorry, is the winner of the Physics Bowl the team that has the most fun?

Leonard: (Sheldon tries to sit on the couch) Sorry, somebody is sitting there.
Sheldon: Who?
Leonard: (triumphantly) My physics bowl trophy!
Sheldon: That trophy is meaningless. I forfeited, therefore, you did not win.
Leonard: I know someone who would disagree.
Sheldon: Who?
Leonard: (triumphantly louder) My physics bowl trophy!
Leonard: (trophy is "speaking") Leonard is so smart! Sheldon who?

Howard: (Buzzing in and giving his correct answer to a question) Seven hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit. The approximate temperature of the young lady in the front row.
(Looks at her)
Dr. Gablehauser: Mr. Wolowitz, this is your second warning.

Penny: (Raj whispers something to Howard) What did he say?
Howard: He compared Sheldon to a disposable feminine cleansing product one might use on a summer's eve.
Penny: Yeah, and the bag it came in.

Leonard: (Giving it to her) Here's your team shirt.
Leslie Winkle: (Reads the front) PMS? A little early, don't you think?
Leonard: It means, "Perpetual Motion Squad".
Leslie Winkle: (Somewhat sarcastically) Oh, of course. What was I thinking?

Sheldon: The objective of the competition is to give correct answers. If I know them, why shouldn't I give them?
Howard: Some of us might have the correct answers, too.
Sheldon: (scoffing) Oh, please. You don't even have a Ph.D.
Howard: (standing up angrily) All right, that's it!
Leonard: Howard, sit down.
Howard: (sitting down submissively) Okay.

Raj: I say we wait until he looks at us, then laugh like "Yes, you are a smart and strong competitor, but we are also smart and strong and we have a reasonable chance of defeating you."
Leonard: How exactly would that laugh go?
Raj: (in high-pitched voice) He-he-he-he-he-he!
Howard: That sounds more like "We are a tall, thin woman who wants to make a coat out of your Dalmatians."
Leonard: Guys, let's remember that Sheldon is still our friend, and my roommate.
Howard: So?
Leonard: So, nothing. Let's destroy him.

Dmitri: (Dmitri takes a quick gander at the equation, then rings in like it's nothing) The answer is minus eight pi alpha.
Sheldon: (to Dr. Gablehauser) Hang on, hang on a second, that is not our answer!
(to Dmitri)
Sheldon: What are you doing?
Dmitri: (Wearily) Answering question; winning physics bowl.
Sheldon: How do *you* know anything about physics?
Dmitri: Here I am janitor. In former Soviet Union, I am physicist; Leningrad Polytechnica - Go Polar Bears.
Sheldon: That's a delightful little story, but our arrangement was that you kept quiet while I answered all the questions.
Dmitri: (Defiantly, without looking at him) You didn't answer question.
Sheldon: (Hissing) Listen you! You may have democracy now in your beloved Russia, but on this physics bowl team, I rule with an iron fist!
(Holds up his wrist-braced right arm with his hand clenched, then winces)
Sheldon: Owwww!

Howard: Maybe I should answer the engineering questions. I am an engineer, after all.
Sheldon: By that logic, I should answer all the anthropology questions because I'm a mammal.

Howard: We're going to need a strong 4th for our team.
Raj: You know who's apparently very smart, is the girl who played TV's "Blossom." She got her Ph.D in neuroscience or something.
Leonard: Raj, we're not getting TV's "Blossom" to join our Physics Bowl team.
Raj: How about the girl from the "Wonder Years?"

Leonard: Sheldon, you have to let somebody else answer.
Sheldon: Why?
Penny: Because it's polite.
Sheldon: What do manners have to do with it? This is war. Were the Romans polite when they salted the ground of Carthage to make sure nothing would ever grow again?
Penny: Leonard, you said I only had to *ask* questions.

Sheldon: Well... At this point I should inform you, I intend to form my own team and will destroy the molecular bonds that bind your very matter together, and reduce the resulting particular chaos to tears.
Leonard: Thanks for the heads up.
Sheldon: You're welcome. One more thing.
Leonard: Yes?
Sheldon: It's on, bitch!

Notes and Trivia

Howard's checkerboard belt buckle in the opening scene is the same design as the 'Jaunting belt' used in Series 3 and 4 of the 1970's UK TV series The Tomorrow People (1973).

Queen's "We Are the Champions" plays during Howard(Simon Helberg)'s triumphant moment at the 29th Annual Physics Bowl. Fittingly, the lead guitarist for that song, Brian May, is an astrophysicist.

Raj suggests "the actress who played TV's Blossom" for their physics bowl team to replace Sheldon. That actress, Mayim Bialik, does have a Ph.D. in neuroscience. Bialik joined the show in the Season 3 finale and became a regular cast member in Season 4 as Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler. Raj also says, "How about the girl from 'The Wonder Years'?" He is referring to Danica McKellar, who has a degree in mathematics, coauthored a physics theorem, and appears in the Season 3 episode The Psychic Vortex (2010) as Abby. Coincidentally, in The Wonder Years (1988), her character's last name is Cooper.

The Batman cookie jar is a regular prop for the remainder of the show's run.

The final question in the Physics Bowl round is a Feynman diagram. Named for their inventor, Richard Feynman, these diagrams visually represent the behavior of subatomic particles.

Goofs

None

Cast

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