Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-calculus-of-variations-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2011/1/b/ii/solution

The integrand is nonnegative, so . For each positive integer , set
This is a continuous piecewise affine sawtooth with zero endpoints, , and almost everywhere. It belongs to , and almost everywhere. Therefore
Together with nonnegativity this proves . The functions converge uniformly to zero while their derivatives retain magnitude two; small amplitude does not force small gradient.
Figure 1.
Uniformly small competitors can retain fixed nonzero slopes: repeated teeth and a shrinking localized bump
. Details.

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