The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization

The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization is the ninth episode of the first season of the CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. This episode aired on March 17, 2008.

Note: This is the first episode after the 2007-2008 WGA Strike, which lasted from November 2007 to February 2008.

Summary
Sheldon and Leonard are invited to present their joint paper at a conference. Sheldon forbids Leonard from presenting it. This eventually spirals into a horrible fight between the two of them.

Extended Plot
The gang is having fun with sending signals across the internet to switch on appliances across their apartment. When the gang is cleaning up after their little activity, Leonard finds a letter in the trash. The letter is addressed to Leonard and Sheldon inviting them to present their papers at a conference, Sheldon explains he threw it away as he refuses to give a speech to a crowd of unappreciating people. Leonard is angered as Sheldon claims their work's success is largely due to himself and as such, he makes the key decisions for it. Despite this, Leonard is still keen on presenting their papers at the conference. Penny comes over to help Leonard pick out a suit to wear to the conference, and Leonard explains to her that his situation with Sheldon has deteriorated. Later, Sheldon and Penny bump into each other while getting their mail, which includes Sheldon's latest copy of Applied Particle Physics Quarterly. On the way up the stairs, Penny attempts to mend Leonard and Sheldon's relationship, but instead she worsens the situation. Before Leonard leaves for the conference he makes a final offer Sheldon asking to present the papers together, he refuses. At the conference, after Leonard finished presenting he opened the floor for Q&A, with Sheldon quickly posing a mocking question. This quickly erupts into a fight between Leonard and Sheldon. After the conference, Sheldon apologized to Leonard for trying to blow up his head with his mind. Suddenly, Howard and Raj burst in and announced that their fight was posted on YouTube (By Howard). Howard also took a picture of Penny asleep on his shoulder and posted it as a picture of his girlfriend. Penny found it. The final scene showed two geeks from "Somewhere in China", who seem to resemble a Chinese Leonard (Talbott Lin) and a Chinese Sheldon (Howard Chan) watching and mocking the aforementioned video. Howard uses the Internet to switch the two guy's lights on and off.

Critics
"The show is so close to breaking out from the pack and becoming an excellent character comedy, but the writers are missing the point. In the last few episodes, in particular, they have set up well written plots, which fall away rather than making a point. The producers of the show worked for long stretches on Two and a Half Men, a show more concerned with punch lines than characters. I hope that the producers chose to develop the show in a different direction, because it can be so much more than it is." - The TV Critic's Review

Trivia

 * Sheldon feels Leonard's chance of winning a Nobel Prize is non-existent as he also said in the Pilot.
 * Leonard received his doctorate at 24 years old, while Sheldon earned his doctorate at 16 years old.
 * Leonard has a BattleStar Galactica flightsuit.
 * Leonard confesses that his last growth spurt was in the 8th grade.
 * It seems Leonard only has a corduroy suit, but he actually wore a three-piece suit in The Luminous Fish Effect.
 * The Flash costume from The Middle-Earth Paradigm is seen in Leonard's closet.
 * Leonard has the DC Direct Bottle City of Kandor.
 * The display prop in front of the Rose Room of the Pasadena Marriott for Leonard's topical conference on Bose-Einstein condensates has an error: "Paradoxical Movement-of-Inertia Changes Due to Putative Super-Solids" should read "Paradoxical Moment-of-Inertia Changes Due to Putative Super-Solids." Leonard's PowerPoint presentation slides and dialogue, on the other hand, are correct.
 * After Howard informs Leonard that there are approximately twenty-five people in attendance for the Institute for Experimental Physics topical conference on Bose-Einstein condensates, Leonard remarks that "in particle physics, twenty-five is Woodstock". However, Bose-Einstein condensates are at the Condensed Matter/AMO Physics interface, not research in the field of Particle Physics as Leonard indicates. Though, Leonard may have been simply comparing the turnout at this conference to an analogous case from his experience as a participant at particle physics conferences.
 * Leonard's spherical chicken joke: ...There’s this farmer, and he has these chickens, but they won’t lay any eggs. So, he calls a physicist to help. The physicist then does some calculations, and he says, um, I have a solution, but it only works with spherical chickens in a vacuum. This is a variation of the spherical cow joke. The point of the joke is that physicists will often reduce a problem to its simplest form in order to make calculations more feasible, even though such simplification may hinder the model's application to reality. A sphere has the smallest surface area per unit volume. So the chicken would want to be spherical to minimize radiative heat transfer. It would also want the minimum surface area to keep from blowing up from the pressure differential. (That's why high pressure vessels are usually spherical.) Further, the particular case of a spherical chicken in a vacuum possibly alludes to an approximation of the conditions inside an egg, albeit a poor one, as there is a positive internal fluid pressure within the eggshell.
 * The embarrassing YouTube video of Sheldon and Leonard fighting is underscored with Three Stooges music.
 * The episode was directed by Joel Murray, who appeared on Lorre's earlier sitcom, "Dharma & Greg".
 * Embarrassing YouTube videos would factor into several more episodes: Sheldon's drunken acceptance speech in Season 3's The Pants Alternative, and Raj's way-too-revealing toast at Howard's stag party in Season 5's The Stag Convergence.