Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 ia Paper 3 2B b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Yes: every finite group of rotations about the origin in the plane is cyclic. A planar rotation is determined by an angle modulo , and composition adds those angles. If consists only of the identity, it is a cyclic group. Otherwise, finiteness allows us to choose the smallest positive representative angle occurring in .
Take any planar rotation in with representative angle . Write , where is an integer and . The composition belongs to and has angle . Minimality of forces , so every element of is a power of .
Similarly, write with . If , the planar rotation has representative angle , a contradiction. Thus andThis proves finite groups of planar rotations are cyclic by an elementary angle argument.