Past exam of the mathematical methods II course of the University of Oxford 2019 resit 2 Solution 2026-10-25
The printed point is not on the printed surface, so the requested tangent plane does not exist. At , the left side of the defining equation is , whereas the right side is . This is a direct counterexample to the premise that the stated point belongs to the surface.
To make the obstruction precise, set . The specified surface is the level set , but . Although , the resulting plane is tangent to the different level set through that point. It is not an answer for the printed surface. A tangent plane requires the point to lie on the surface.
If the intended correction preserves , the surface equation instead forces . At the corrected point ,The corresponding conditional tangent plane isThis conditional calculation identifies a possible repair; it does not silently replace the source's coordinate .