Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2011/paper-1/20/a/iii/solution

At , the squared prefactor tends to , so the oscillatory discontinuity again remains. Near zero,
It is unbounded near zero, despite its assigned zero value there, so it is neither continuous nor differentiable at zero.
At , put . Then
Thus is continuous and differentiable at , with . After translating the point to zero, the estimate shows how quadratic damping restores differentiability at the origin. The only discontinuities and nondifferentiability points are and ; the function is smooth away from these two points and . At , its derivative exists but is not continuous.
Indeed, for near , put . Then . Here and , so the derivative retains oscillations. Existence of the derivative at a point does not require continuity of nearby derivatives.
Figure 1.
Quadratic suppression giving a zero derivative at the positive pole, and an unbounded discontinuity at zero
. Details.

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