Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2001/paper-2/1/c/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2001 Paper 2 1 c Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
For this homogeneous first-order differential equation, set , with . The product rule gives , and substitution simplifies the equation toThe useful further substitution is . Its chain rule derivative satisfiesThus . Replacing and gives the implicit solutionNo division by was needed, so the level is included. A direct verification also identifies the integrating factor for a differential one-form:Setting this exact differential to zero recovers precisely the original equation after multiplication by the nonzero factor . The coefficient never vanishes for real , since implies . Hence these level sets give local function graphs everywhere with .
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