Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2024/paper-1/18/a/i/solution

The first coordinate direction is already an eigenvector of with eigenvalue . On the last two coordinates, the matrix is , with characteristic polynomial
Thus the three eigenvalues are . For , the last two components are equal; for , they are opposite. Normalising by the Euclidean norm gives the complete list
Each sign-reversed vector is an equally valid choice. The three displayed eigenvectors are mutually orthogonal, as expected for a real symmetric matrix with distinct eigenvalues.

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