Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 ib Paper 3 1E Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
For , ordinary differentiation of the two smooth components givesAt zero, use the definition of the derivative in the Euclidean norm:Thus has differentiability everywhere and . The two vectors and are orthogonal unit vectors, so the squared norm of the displayed derivative is . ConsequentlyThis discontinuous derivative of a differentiable plane curve also shows why componentwise scalar mean value theorem conclusions do not supply a single intermediate point reproducing an entire vector-valued difference quotient.