Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2008 Paper 1 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Each spatial eigenfunction acquires the temporal factor under the heat equation. Expanding the initial constant using the preceding coefficients gives the cooling of an initially uniform square:For the exponential factors justify differentiating the series and enforce the zero boundary temperature. As , it tends to at every interior point and in L2 space; the instantaneous boundary cooling is incompatible with continuity at the initial boundary corners, which is expected for this idealization.
The slowest decaying nonzero mode is , givingat each fixed interior point when . The next contributing modes have and decay as , making the leading-mode approximation exponentially accurate.