Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 ib Paper 1 14B ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
Use the drift-removing substitution for a Dirichlet Sturm-Liouville problem, . Direct differentiation gives . The homogeneous boundary conditions become , so the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions areThe self-adjoint weighted form isThus the weight and leading coefficient are both . The orthogonality of Sturm-Liouville eigenfunctions readsAfter multiplying the forcing equation by , it becomes . Expanding in the sine series of part (i) and dividing by givesEvery term satisfies the endpoint conditions. As a check, solving the transformed ODE directly gives , which has the same coefficients and forcing.