Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/ia/paper-4/9c/solution

Outside a spherical Earth the gravitational field is the field of its total mass at the center, by the shell theorem. Since , the inverse-square force on the upward radial trajectory gives
The independent dimensional inputs are , of dimensions . A dimensionless monomial in them must be a power of . Thus dimensional analysis gives
For a finite turning height and time, assume , equivalently . This escape velocity restriction is implicit in the requested maximum-height formulas.
The conservation of energy, per unit particle mass, is
so
The numerator vanishes at the turning point, giving
On ascent , and integrating gives
The upper endpoint has an integrable inverse-square-root singularity. Set , use and , and note . The result is
For small , and , recovering and . At the particle escapes marginally and has no finite maximum; for it escapes with nonzero asymptotic speed. The finite-turning formulas must not be extended to those cases.

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