Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 13 1 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
Take the three-dimensional affine quadric coneThe polynomial is an irreducible polynomial: as a polynomial in over , it is primitive because and are coprime elements of a unique factorization domain, and it is a linear irreducible polynomial over . Gauss lemma for polynomials then applies. Thus is an irreducible variety that is an affine variety, of algebraic dimension by the principal hypersurface dimension lemma in affine space .
The coordinate rings of and are respectively and . Both are affine planes, hence irreducible closed subsets of algebraic dimension . Their intersection is precisely the origin. ThereforeThe origin is the singular point of an algebraic variety of this three-dimensional affine quadric cone. The example shows why a smoothness of an algebraic variety hypothesis matters in intersection dimension estimates.