Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2012/paper-1/13/a/solution

Work on an interval with . The homogeneous first-order differential equation becomes a separable differential equation under : substituting gives , hence .
For , integration gives . Renaming the arbitrary constant produces
For the nonzero family the denominator must remain nonzero, so take any connected interval avoiding both and . The zero solution must be restored after division by ; by the Picard-Lindelöf theorem away from , a solution cannot switch between zero and a nonzero branch there.

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