Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 ib Paper 2 7B Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2011 ii Paper 3 38B Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 ia Paper 4 9B a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
Work in one fixed inertial frame, and take positive velocity in the rocket's direction. During , the rocket ejects the positive amount of mass . Its exhaust has inertial velocity , by the Galilean transformation of velocities. Once expelled, that material retains its velocity because it experiences no external force. The system's momentum is therefore the rocket momentum plus the sum of all these exhaust momenta:The minus sign comes from the positive expelled mass being .
Differentiate, applying the product rule to the rocket momentum and the fundamental theorem of calculus to the integral:The momentum conservation law thus gives the nonrelativistic rocket equation
The same bookkeeping for kinetic energy givesIts derivative iswhere the rocket equation cancels the first two terms. Thus kinetic energy increases during mass ejection, with when and . This does not violate conservation of energy: the increase comes from stored internal energy.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 343 1 iv Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Suppress tildes in the normalized equation and let . A Gross–Pitaevskii solitary wave stationary in these translating coordinates obeysThe boundary fixes the bulk complex argument and describes a localized disturbance with zero net vortex winding number; a vortex pair is possible. No extra plane-wave factor is needed when only the coordinates are changed. A full Galilean transformation of the field would additionally change the bulk flow and its complex argument convention.
Subtract the uniform background from the grand potential. A convenient dimensionless energy and the renormalized momentum of a condensate areThe subtraction in removes the troublesome background complex argument gradient. In particular, for the usual subsonic localized far field , , and , the energy density is and the momentum integrand is , both integrable in two dimensions. Merely writing without sufficient decay is not by itself a convergence proof. The common solitary-wave branch is subsonic: linearizing this normalization gives and speed of sound .
Integration by parts, with decaying variations and their boundary terms vanishing, givesThus the translating equation is precisely . Along a differentiable family with fixed bulk normalization, evaluate this stationarity on to obtainwhere . This energy–momentum slope of a solitary wave does not require differentiating the Lagrange multiplier inside the field variation. At a turning point the parametrized identity remains true, while need not be a single-valued function of locally. The chosen factors make , consistent with the normalized equation; changing the normalization of alone would change the claimed slope.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 ia Paper 4 3A b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
The basic Galilean transformations include spacetime translations , ; spatial rotations , ; and boosts , , where is a rotation matrix and is constant.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2022 ia Paper 4 4C a i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Principle of Galilean relativity 2026-10-03
The laws of Newtonian mechanics have the same form in every inertial frame related by a Galilean transformation.