Goofs

Howard mentions that the team would have to face Sheldon "man to man to man" with only three members on their team, but later Sheldon states that the rules state there must be four members of a team.

Sheldon errs when saying gram for gram, no animal beats the strength of the Army Ant.

Army Ants are not, gram for gram, the strongest animal, that is a misconception. Insects appear to have disproportionate strength because their surface area is large compared to their volume. Insect muscle moves very little volume compared to what human muscle has to move. An insect the size of a human would be as strong as humans.

When Dr. Gablehauser presents the final question at the Physics Bowl he says, "Solve the equation," but there is no equation on the slide. But a Feynman diagram is a way to easily represent the interacting particles in order to tally up the forces correctly in line with the laws of physics, and any such Feynman diagram could be said to have a singular answer which could be expressed as "solving the equation".

Raj has the ability to answer a question despite sitting right next Leslie, a woman. It was explained earlier when they were practicing with Penny giving the questions that he can talk if there are multiple women in a room and not when it's one-on-one.

It is strongly suggested that, by beating the AA team, PMS wins the Physics Bowl trophy, but, at the start of the competition, Dr. Gablehauser states that it is only a preliminary match. However, Sheldon's team may have been the only significant competition which the 'PMS' team faced. If the seeding of the tournament had these two powerhouses facing off in a preliminary round, the winner could have easily steamrollered the remaining competition and taken the trophy home after the final match.

When Howard says he should answer the engineering questions since he is an engineer, Sheldon says that by that logic he should answer all the anthropology questions because he is a mammal. He should have said it would be because he is a man. Humans are the only mammals to fall under the umbrella of anthropology. But this is kind of Sheldon's point: Howard knowing the most about engineering because he's an engineer is like a cat, say, answering questions about anthropology.

Leonard shows off the trophy he (and PMS) won to Sheldon. When Dr. Gablehauser first introduces the teams, he stated that it was "today's preliminary match." Unless there were only a few teams in the tournament, it is unlikely that they would get a trophy for an early-round victory. However, the other rounds to the final simply weren't shown and it is assumed PMS didn't have difficulty reaching the final and winning it.

Sheldon gives an answer of "4.1855 time 10 to the seventh ergs per calorie." It is odd that he would be giving an answer in obsolete units: both are units of energy but a physicist (even an American one) would use Joules. However, the question could have been "What is the conversion factor between ergs and calories?" and this would have been the close to the correct answer: the number should have been 4.184, not 4.1855, which Sheldon would have known.

The buzzer sounds just before Dmitri hits it, to answer the final question.

Seasoned theoretical physicists like Sheldon and Leslie Winkle, and maybe even Leonard should not have been bewildered by the final question, which is a basic Feynman diagram with a known answer, hence the plausibility that the Russian janitor/scientist knew the answer from the top of his head.

At the end, Leonard sits in Sheldon's spot and he doesn't say anything. Also, he sits in another spot without complaint. This differs from the usual Sheldon behavior about sitting in his spot or that no-one else sits in his spot.

When Penny is helping the guys practice for the physics bowl, we can see Leonard sitting in Sheldon's spot while Sheldon, who is in the same room as Leonard, is not making a big deal out of it.

Sheldon does the Vulcan hand gesture incorrectly. He does it with thumb in.

While speculating about the new Star Trek movie depicting Spock's conception, Raj wonders aloud, "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.' " However, in ST6 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Kirk incapacitates an alien in a prison fight by kicking him in the knee. Shocked at the effectiveness of the blow, he is informed by Martia (played by Iman) that, "Not everyone keeps their genitals in the same place, Captain."

According to Sheldon (his Spanish is not good), the fourth member of his team is either "her son or her butcher". The Spanish word for son is "hijo" (pronounced "ee-ho") while butcher is "carnicero". It would be hard to confuse these two words, especially for someone like Sheldon.