Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2024 / Paper 1 / 18 / a / i / Solution

The first coordinate direction is already an eigenvector of $A$ with eigenvalue $4$. On the last two coordinates, the matrix is $\left(\begin{array}{cc}2& 4\\ 4& 2\end{array}\right)$, with characteristic polynomialThus the three eigenvalues are $4,6,-2$. For $\lambda =6$, the last two components are equal; for $\lambda =-2$, they are opposite. Normalising by the Euclidean norm gives the complete listEach sign-reversed vector is an equally valid choice. The three displayed eigenvectors are mutually orthogonal, as expected for a real symmetric matrix with distinct eigenvalues.