Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2008 Paper 1 16 a iii Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
On an interval avoiding zero put . A real solution requires , and the principal square root is . The homogeneous first-order differential equation reduces toWhere , separation of variables gives . Thus the nonconstant pieces arerestricted to intervals where the cosine of the phase is nonnegative. This sign condition is essential when substituting back into the original square root.
There are also the solutions and . They can join the nonconstant pieces with a continuous first derivative, because the transformed rate vanishes but is not Lipschitz continuous at . For example, on the positive axis every givesThe sticking solutions of a bounded square-root differential equation describe the same joining mechanism on either half-axis after using the increasing variable .