The Monster Isolation - S6-E17
Corrected entry: When Leonard tells Sheldon to hand over his Nintendo DS, Sheldon gives him a shiny aqua console. The Nintendo DS has never been produced in that color: the console is actually a 3DS, not a DS.
Moose
7th Apr 2013
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
11th Jun 2012
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
Corrected entry: Leonard and Penny are inhaling Sulphur Hexaflouride to make their voices low. The effect can be seen to be fake for two reasons. First, their voices go back to normal instantly and on demand - the gas actually takes a while to clear. Second, when Leonard releases the balloon, it flies away; it should just fall to the floor because Sulphur Hexaflouride is heavier than air.
Correction: 1. Wrong episode. This scene is from Episode 23. 2. Your voice will clear in as much time as it takes to clear your lungs - one or two breaths. 3. A sulfur hexafluoride balloon will still fly, as the escaping gas is still propelling it, as demonstrated in this clip by Mythbuster Adam Savage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-XbjFn3aqE.
13th Apr 2012
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
Corrected entry: When Penny and Leonard are talking to Sheldon about their date, Sheldon refers to Schrodinger's Cat, stating "The cat in the box is both alive and dead, until you open the box and find out." Yet the precise point of the Schrodinger's Cat example is that the cat cannot be both alive and dead. Schrodinger was arguing against physicists of the time who claimed that certain subatomic particles were special and could be in opposite states at the same time; his argument was that you can't make small systems special because a large and obvious system (e.g., the cat) could always be made to depend on the state of the smaller one, and for a large and obvious system to be in opposite states simultaneously is ridiculous. Now, this is pretty obscure and the misunderstanding of Schrodinger's Cat experiment is widespread, but this is Sheldon we're talking about.
Correction: This is not a factual error on Sheldon's part. He explicitly says that Schrodinger's experiment was an attempt to explain the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, which implies that the cat could be both dead and alive until the box is opened and observed. While he doesn't explain that the point of the experiment was to critique the prevailing thought of the time, his overall point to Penny fits within the context as given.
13th Aug 2012
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
Corrected entry: When Howard is showing Penny the online game and Penny expresses interest, Raj says "Smooth", even though Penny is right there - breaking his mutism rule.
Correction: This has never been a diagnosed condition in his case. In Episode 13 of the same season, during a group conversation he accidentally says "good story" with Penny present and immediately realized that he talked in front of a female then covered his mouth. This is just a individual non-medical problem.
14th Jun 2012
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
The Cruciferous Vegetable Amplification - S4-E2
Corrected entry: When Sheldon is taking his Apple II to be signed by Steve Wozniak, the machine he's taking clearly has a monitor attached in place on the top. The Apple II did not have an attached monitor.
Correction: You can clearly see a gap between monitor and main computer unit, indicating that they are separate units. Also the colors are different, further indicating they were made separately.
28th May 2012
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
Corrected entry: Sheldon states that reductio ad absurdum is "the logical fallacy of extending an argument to a ridiculous extreme and then challenging it". This is incorrect; this is the straw man fallacy. Reductio ad absurdum is the entirely valid inferential technique of demonstrating that the consequences of an argument being true result in a contradiction.
Correction: Sheldon is correct. "Reductio ad absurdum" (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence. Proof by contradiction is a specific form of Reductio ad absurdum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum A strawman argument is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html The major difference between the two is that an Reductio ad absurdum argument presents the opponent's claim correctly but carries it to an extreme. The Strawman argument presents the opponent's claim incorrectly.
13th Apr 2012
The Big Bang Theory (2007)
The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary - S3-E5
Corrected entry: Wil Wheaton tells Sheldon that he missed the convention because his grandmother died. When Wheaton later refers to a living grandmother, Sheldon realizes he has been tricked. He shouldn't - presumably Wheaton, like everyone else, has two grandmothers (mother's and father's side) and thus Wheaton announcing he has a living grandmother in no way contradicts what he said before. This alone shouldn't tip Sheldon off that Wheaton was lying.
Correction: In context of how the scenes played out, it is directly implied (and very obvious) that Wheaton is talking about the same grandmother.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Correction: Semantics. To most people, "DS" is sufficient enough to specify all of the Nintendo DS consoles. The same way that "Xbox" is sufficient enough to specify the Xbox 360.
THGhost
Most people yes, but Sheldon not being pedantic?
Moose ★
He could have corrected him later. We don't get to see everything they supposedly say to each other.
lionhead
Precisely. Plus it wasn't Sheldon that simply called it a "Nintendo DS." Leonard did. He's not as pedantic as Sheldon.
THGhost