Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 ia Paper 2 8A iv Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
Use the shift derivative of a step response, writing with . Differentiate with respect to the forcing location:The possible delta term vanishes because , while . Therefore, as a distribution and also as the ordinary piecewise response,Moving the start of a unit step differentiates its forcing into a negative impulse. The zero initial conditions and linearity ensure that the corresponding responses obey the same identity, including the zero-frequency cases.