Dr. Linkletter: 26 dimensions. In what world are there 26 dimensions?
Dr. John Sturgis: When I was an undergraduate, we made fun of the old professors who didn't understand the theory of mesons.
Dr. Linkletter: [chuckles] Me, too. I told my thesis advisor, "I'm surprised you don't understand the physics of time. You were here for the dawn of it." [both laugh]
Dr. John Sturgis: And now, we've become them.
Dr. Linkletter: I wish. My mentor was a Fields Medal winner, taught at Princeton. What have I done?
Dr. John Sturgis: You wrote that article on the positron.
Dr. Linkletter: I did. I was the belle of the physics ball that year. And you... you've lectured all over the world.
Dr. John Sturgis: I can ask for Pepto Bismol in 16 languages. Boro na, eho ligo Pepto-Bismol? [laughs] That was Greek.

Dr. John Sturgis: See, this is why we're great together. You teach me about social etiquette, and I teach you about beaver anuses.
Meemaw: [CHUCKLES] It is magical.
Dr. John Sturgis: Did you know "ani" is also acceptable as the plural of "anus"?
Meemaw: And the magic continues.

Dr. John Sturgis: Hello, my little vicuña.
Meemaw: [chuckles] Well, hello to you, too. And more importantly, what is a vicuña?
Dr. John Sturgis: Only what I feel is the cutest camelid on the planet.
Meemaw: Well, I suppose I could ask you what a camelid is, but you're just gonna say more words that I don't know.

Meemaw: John?
Dr. John Sturgis: Hello.
Meemaw: What- What're you doing?
Dr. John Sturgis: I was doing tai chi and then I realized that I was continually being bombarded by subatomic particles and it behooves me, perhaps, to pay slightly closer attention to them. Maybe "chi" is the ancient Chinese word for the subatomic universe.
Meemaw: You're scaring me, John.
Dr. John Sturgis: Well, there's nothing to be scared of. Tomorrow, somebody will win the Nobel Prize about these particles not me. But I'm experiencing them firsthand [LAUGHS] which could be better.
Meemaw: Why don't you come down and experience them on the floor?
Dr. John Sturgis: I think I just felt a neutrino. [LAUGHING] You know, neutrinos are interesting. They never bond with anything, they're always alone. I think that one went right through my pants.
Meemaw: All right, why don't we go downstairs, and I'll fix us both a nice cup of hot tea and you can tell me all about it. Please?
Dr. John Sturgis: Okay. It was my dream to win the Nobel, and I'm not going to. I bet Sheldon will.
Meemaw: That'll be something.
Dr. John Sturgis: Yeah.

Adult Sheldon: I always believed my extraordinary life would be chronicled in numerous biographies. I even used to make up my own titles. My favorites were: "From Texas to Success: the Sheldon Cooper Journey", and "Cooper for Kids", a pre-school introduction to quantum gravity in superstrings. The point is, I knew my formative years would be well-documented, which meant I needed to polish up some of my early academic credentials, especially East Texas Tech.

Sheldon: If W is the Kähler metric on the algebraic variety X, and the canonical bundle KX is trivial, then X is what?
Dr. John Sturgis: A Zariski space.
Sheldon: Wrong. [slaps Dr. Sturgis's hand with his pencil]
Dr. John Sturgis: Hey!
Dr. Linkletter: Obviously, it's an elliptic curve.
Sheldon: Wrong. [slaps Dr. Linkletter's hand with the pencil]
Dr. Linkletter: Hey!

Dr. John Sturgis: Why are you hitting us?
[flashback:]
Mei-Tung: Wrong.
Sheldon: Ow! Why'd you hit me?
Mei-Tung: Pain is the best teacher.
[present:]
Sheldon: I'm teaching you.
Dr. Linkletter: Well, it feels like you're hitting us.
Sheldon: Like you, I struggled with these concepts, but eventually, I mastered them, through hard work, resilience and a healthy dose of knuckle whacking.