Part IA, {{ year }}
Part IA 2013
Paper 1, Section I, D
Part IA, 2013 commentShow that for .
Let be a sequence of positive real numbers. Show that for every ,
Deduce that tends to a limit as if and only if does.
Paper 1, Section I, F
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Suppose for and . Show that converges.
(b) Does the series converge or diverge? Explain your answer.
Paper 2, Section II, A
Part IA, 2013 commentFind and which satisfy
subject to at .
Paper 2, Section II, A
Part IA, 2013 commentMedical equipment is sterilised by placing it in a hot oven for a time and then removing it and letting it cool for the same time. The equipment at temperature warms and cools at a rate equal to the product of a constant and the difference between its temperature and its surroundings, when warming in the oven and when cooling outside. The equipment starts the sterilisation process at temperature .
Bacteria are killed by the heat treatment. Their number decreases at a rate equal to the product of the current number and a destruction factor . This destruction factor varies linearly with temperature, vanishing at and having a maximum at .
Find an implicit equation for such that the number of bacteria is reduced by a factor of by the sterilisation process.
A second hardier species of bacteria requires the oven temperature to be increased to achieve the same destruction factor . How is the sterilisation time affected?
Paper 4, Section I, B
Part IA, 2013 commentA hot air balloon of mass is equipped with a bag of sand of mass which decreases in time as the sand is gradually released. In addition to gravity the balloon experiences a constant upwards buoyancy force and we neglect air resistance effects. Show that if is the upward speed of the balloon then
Initially at the mass of sand is and the balloon is at rest in equilibrium. Subsequently the sand is released at a constant rate and is depleted in a time . Show that the speed of the balloon at time is
[You may use without proof the indefinite integral ]
Paper 4, Section , B
Part IA, 2013 commentA frame moves with constant velocity along the axis of an inertial frame of Minkowski space. A particle moves with constant velocity along the axis of . Find the velocity of in .
The rapidity of any velocity is defined by . Find a relation between the rapidities of and .
Suppose now that is initially at rest in and is subsequently given successive velocity increments of (each delivered in the instantaneous rest frame of the particle). Show that the resulting velocity of in is
where .
[You may use without proof the addition formulae and .]
Paper 4, Section II, B
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) A particle of unit mass moves in a plane with polar coordinates . You may assume that the radial and angular components of the acceleration are given by , where the dot denotes . The particle experiences a central force corresponding to a potential .
(i) Prove that is constant in time and show that the time dependence of the radial coordinate is equivalent to the motion of a particle in one dimension in a potential given by
(ii) Now suppose that . Show that if then two circular orbits are possible with radii and . Determine whether each orbit is stable or unstable.
(b) Kepler's first and second laws for planetary motion are the following statements:
K1: the planet moves on an ellipse with a focus at the Sun;
K2: the line between the planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.
Show that K2 implies that the force acting on the planet is a central force.
Show that K2 together with implies that the force is given by the inverse square law.
[You may assume that an ellipse with a focus at the origin has polar equation with and .]
Paper 4, Section II, B
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) A rigid body is made up of particles of masses at positions . Let denote the position of its centre of mass. Show that the total kinetic energy of may be decomposed into , the kinetic energy of the centre of mass, plus a term representing the kinetic energy about the centre of mass.
Suppose now that is rotating with angular velocity about its centre of mass. Define the moment of inertia of (about the axis defined by ) and derive an expression for in terms of and .
(b) Consider a uniform rod of length and mass . Two such rods and are freely hinged together at . The end is attached to a fixed point on a perfectly smooth horizontal floor and is able to rotate freely about . The rods are initially at rest, lying in a vertical plane with resting on the floor and each rod making angle with the horizontal. The rods subsequently move under gravity in their vertical plane.
Find an expression for the angular velocity of rod when it makes angle with the floor. Determine the speed at which the hinge strikes the floor.
Paper 4 , Section II, B
Part IA, 2013 comment(i) An inertial frame has orthonormal coordinate basis vectors . A second frame rotates with angular velocity relative to and has coordinate basis vectors . The motion of is characterised by the equations and at the two coordinate frames coincide.
If a particle has position vector show that where and are the velocity vectors of as seen by observers fixed respectively in and .
(ii) For the remainder of this question you may assume that where and are the acceleration vectors of as seen by observers fixed respectively in and , and that is constant.
Consider again the frames and in (i). Suppose that with constant. A particle of mass moves under a force . When viewed in its position and velocity at time are and . Find the motion of the particle in the coordinates of . Show that for an observer fixed in , the particle achieves its maximum speed at time and determine that speed. [Hint: you may find it useful to consider the combination .]
Paper 4, Section II, B
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Let with coordinates and with coordinates be inertial frames in Minkowski space with two spatial dimensions. moves with velocity along the -axis of and they are related by the standard Lorentz transformation:
A photon is emitted at the spacetime origin. In it has frequency and propagates at angle to the -axis.
Write down the 4 -momentum of the photon in the frame .
Hence or otherwise find the frequency of the photon as seen in . Show that it propagates at angle to the -axis in , where
A light source in emits photons uniformly in all directions in the -plane. Show that for large , in half of the light is concentrated into a narrow cone whose semi-angle is given by .
(b) The centre-of-mass frame for a system of relativistic particles in Minkowski space is the frame in which the total relativistic 3-momentum is zero.
Two particles and of rest masses and move collinearly with uniform velocities and respectively, along the -axis of a frame . They collide, coalescing to form a single particle .
Determine the velocity of the centre-of-mass frame of the system comprising and .
Find the speed of in and show that its rest mass is given by
where
Paper 3, Section I, D
Part IA, 2013 commentState Lagrange's Theorem.
Let be a finite group, and and two subgroups of such that
(i) the orders of and are coprime;
(ii) every element of may be written as a product , with and ;
(iii) both and are normal subgroups of .
Prove that is isomorphic to .
Paper 3, Section I, D
Part IA, 2013 commentDefine what it means for a group to be cyclic, and for a group to be abelian. Show that every cyclic group is abelian, and give an example to show that the converse is false.
Show that a group homomorphism from the cyclic group of order to a group determines, and is determined by, an element of such that .
Hence list all group homomorphisms from to the symmetric group .
Paper 1, Section II, D
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Determine the radius of convergence of each of the following power series:
(b) State Taylor's theorem.
Show that
for all , where
Paper 3, Section II, D
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Let be a finite group. Show that there exists an injective homomorphism to a symmetric group, for some set .
(b) Let be the full group of symmetries of the cube, and the set of edges of the cube.
Show that acts transitively on , and determine the stabiliser of an element of . Hence determine the order of .
Show that the action of on defines an injective homomorphism to the group of permutations of , and determine the number of cosets of in .
Is a normal subgroup of Prove your answer.
Paper 3, Section II, D
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Let be a prime, and let be the group of matrices of determinant 1 with entries in the field of integers .
(i) Define the action of on by Möbius transformations. [You need not show that it is a group action.]
State the orbit-stabiliser theorem.
Determine the orbit of and the stabiliser of . Hence compute the order of .
(ii) Let
Show that is conjugate to in if , but not if .
(b) Let be the set of all matrices of the form
where . Show that is a subgroup of the group of all invertible real matrices.
Let be the subset of given by matrices with . Show that is a normal subgroup, and that the quotient group is isomorphic to .
Determine the centre of , and identify the quotient group .
Paper 3, Section II, D
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Let be the dihedral group of order , the symmetry group of a regular polygon with sides.
Determine all elements of order 2 in . For each element of order 2 , determine its conjugacy class and the smallest normal subgroup containing it.
(b) Let be a finite group.
(i) Prove that if and are subgroups of , then is a subgroup if and only if or .
(ii) Let be a proper subgroup of , and write for the elements of not in . Let be the subgroup of generated by .
Show that .
Paper 3, Section II, D
Part IA, 2013 commentLet be a prime number.
Prove that every group whose order is a power of has a non-trivial centre.
Show that every group of order is abelian, and that there are precisely two of them, up to isomorphism.
Paper 4, Section I, E
Part IA, 2013 commentLet and be positive integers. State what is meant by the greatest common divisor of and , and show that there exist integers and such that . Deduce that an integer divides both and only if divides .
Prove (without using the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic) that for any positive integer .
Paper 4, Section I, E
Part IA, 2013 commentLet be a sequence of real numbers. What does it mean to say that the sequence is convergent? What does it mean to say the series is convergent? Show that if is convergent, then the sequence converges to zero. Show that the converse is not necessarily true.
Paper 4, Section II, E
Part IA, 2013 comment(i) What does it mean to say that a function is injective? What does it mean to say that is surjective? Let be a function. Show that if is injective, then so is , and that if is surjective, then so is .
(ii) Let be two sets. Their product is the set of ordered pairs with . Let (for be the function
When is surjective? When is injective?
(iii) Now let be any set, and let be functions. Show that there exists a unique such that and .
Show that if or is injective, then is injective. Is the converse true? Justify your answer.
Show that if is surjective then both and are surjective. Is the converse true? Justify your answer.
Paper 4, Section II, E
Part IA, 2013 comment(i) Let and be integers with . Let be the set of -tuples of non-negative integers satisfying the equation . By mapping elements of to suitable subsets of of size , or otherwise, show that the number of elements of equals
(ii) State the Inclusion-Exclusion principle.
(iii) Let be positive integers. Show that the number of -tuples of integers satisfying
where the binomial coefficient is defined to be zero if .
Paper 4, Section II,
Part IA, 2013 comment(i) What does it mean to say that a set is countable? Show directly from your definition that any subset of a countable set is countable, and that a countable union of countable sets is countable.
(ii) Let be either or . A function is said to be periodic if there exists a positive integer such that for every . Show that the set of periodic functions from to itself is countable. Is the set of periodic functions countable? Justify your answer.
(iii) Show that is not the union of a countable collection of lines.
[You may assume that and the power set of are uncountable.]
Paper 4, Section II, E
Part IA, 2013 commentLet be a prime number, and integers with .
(i) Prove Fermat's Little Theorem: for any integer .
(ii) Show that if is an integer such that , then for every integer ,
Deduce that
(iii) Show that there exists a unique integer such that
Paper 1, Section II, E
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Let . Suppose that for every sequence in with limit , the sequence converges to . Show that is continuous at .
(b) State the Intermediate Value Theorem.
Let be a function with . We say is injective if for all with , we have . We say is strictly increasing if for all with , we have .
(i) Suppose is strictly increasing. Show that it is injective, and that if then
(ii) Suppose is continuous and injective. Show that if then . Deduce that is strictly increasing.
(iii) Suppose is strictly increasing, and that for every there exists with . Show that is continuous at . Deduce that is continuous on .
Paper 2, Section I, F
Part IA, 2013 commentLet be a random variable with mean and variance . Let
Show that for all . For what value of is there equality?
Let
Supposing that has probability density function , express in terms of . Show that is minimised when is such that .
Paper 2, Section I, F
Part IA, 2013 comment(i) Let be a random variable. Use Markov's inequality to show that
for all and real .
(ii) Calculate in the case where is a Poisson random variable with parameter . Using the inequality from part (i) with a suitable choice of , prove that
for all .
Paper 2, Section II, F
Part IA, 2013 commentLet be an exponential random variable with parameter . Show that
for any .
Let be the greatest integer less than or equal to . What is the probability mass function of ? Show that .
Let be the fractional part of . What is the density of ?
Show that and are independent.
Paper 2, Section II, F
Part IA, 2013 commentLet be a random variable taking values in the non-negative integers, and let be the probability generating function of . Assuming is everywhere finite, show that
where is the mean of and is its variance. [You may interchange differentiation and expectation without justification.]
Consider a branching process where individuals produce independent random numbers of offspring with the same distribution as . Let be the number of individuals in the -th generation, and let be the probability generating function of . Explain carefully why
Assuming , compute the mean of . Show that
Suppose and . Compute the probability that the population will eventually become extinct. You may use standard results on branching processes as long as they are clearly stated.
Paper 2, Section II, F
Part IA, 2013 commentLet be a geometric random variable with . Derive formulae for and in terms of
A jar contains balls. Initially, all of the balls are red. Every minute, a ball is drawn at random from the jar, and then replaced with a green ball. Let be the number of minutes until the jar contains only green balls. Show that the expected value of is . What is the variance of
Paper 2, Section II, F
Part IA, 2013 commentLet be the sample space of a probabilistic experiment, and suppose that the sets are a partition of into events of positive probability. Show that
for any event of positive probability.
A drawer contains two coins. One is an unbiased coin, which when tossed, is equally likely to turn up heads or tails. The other is a biased coin, which will turn up heads with probability and tails with probability . One coin is selected (uniformly) at random from the drawer. Two experiments are performed:
(a) The selected coin is tossed times. Given that the coin turns up heads times and tails times, what is the probability that the coin is biased?
(b) The selected coin is tossed repeatedly until it turns up heads times. Given that the coin is tossed times in total, what is the probability that the coin is biased?
Paper 3, Section I, C
Part IA, 2013 commentThe curve is given by
(i) Compute the arc length of between the points with and .
(ii) Derive an expression for the curvature of as a function of arc length measured from the point with .
Paper 3, Section , C
Part IA, 2013 commentState a necessary and sufficient condition for a vector field on to be conservative.
Check that the field
is conservative and find a scalar potential for .
Paper 3, Section II, C
Part IA, 2013 commentGive an explicit formula for which makes the following result hold:
where the region , with coordinates , and the region , with coordinates , are in one-to-one correspondence, and
Explain, in outline, why this result holds.
Let be the region in defined by and . Sketch the region and employ a suitable transformation to evaluate the integral
Paper 3, Section II, C
Part IA, 2013 commentConsider the bounded surface that is the union of for and for . Sketch the surface.
Using suitable parametrisations for the two parts of , calculate the integral
for .
Check your result using Stokes's Theorem.
Paper 1, Section II, E
Part IA, 2013 comment(i) State (without proof) Rolle's Theorem.
(ii) State and prove the Mean Value Theorem.
(iii) Let be continuous, and differentiable on with for all . Show that there exists such that
Deduce that if moreover , and the limit
exists, then
(iv) Deduce that if is twice differentiable then for any
Paper 3, Section II, C
Part IA, 2013 commentIf and are vectors in , show that
is a second rank tensor.
Now assume that and obey Maxwell's equations, which in suitable units read
where is the charge density and the current density. Show that
Paper 3, Section II, C
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Prove that
(b) State the divergence theorem for a vector field in a closed region bounded by .
For a smooth vector field and a smooth scalar function prove that
where is the outward unit normal on the surface .
Use this identity to prove that the solution to the Laplace equation in with on is unique, provided it exists.
Paper 1, Section I,
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) State de Moivre's theorem and use it to derive a formula for the roots of order of a complex number . Using this formula compute the cube roots of .
(b) Consider the equation for . Give a geometric description of the set of solutions and sketch as a subset of the complex plane.
Paper 1, Section I, A
Part IA, 2013 commentLet be a real matrix.
(i) For with
find an angle so that the element , where denotes the entry of the matrix .
(ii) For with and
show that and find an angle so that .
(iii) For with and
show that and find an angle so that .
(iv) Deduce that any real matrix can be written as a product of an orthogonal matrix and an upper triangular matrix.
Paper 1, Section II,
Part IA, 2013 commentLet and be non-zero vectors in . What is meant by saying that and are linearly independent? What is the dimension of the subspace of spanned by and if they are (1) linearly independent, (2) linearly dependent?
Define the scalar product for . Define the corresponding norm of . State and prove the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, and deduce the triangle inequality. Under what condition does equality hold in the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality?
Let be unit vectors in . Let
Show that for any fixed, linearly independent vectors and , the minimum of over is attained when for some , and that for this value of we have
(i) (for any choice of and ;
(ii) and in the case where .
Paper 1, Section II,
Part IA, 2013 commentDefine the kernel and the image of a linear map from to .
Let be a basis of and a basis of . Explain how to represent by a matrix relative to the given bases.
A second set of bases and is now used to represent by a matrix . Relate the elements of to the elements of .
Let be a linear map from to defined by
Either find one or more in such that
or explain why one cannot be found.
Let be a linear map from to defined by
Find the kernel of .
Paper 1, Section II, B
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Let be distinct eigenvalues of an matrix , with corresponding eigenvectors . Prove that the set is linearly independent.
(b) Consider the quadric surface in defined by
Find the position of the origin and orthonormal coordinate basis vectors and , for a coordinate system in which takes the form
Also determine the values of and , and describe the surface geometrically.
Paper 1, Section II, B
Part IA, 2013 comment(a) Let and be the matrices of a linear map on relative to bases and respectively. In this question you may assume without proof that and are similar.
(i) State how the matrix of relative to the basis is constructed from and . Also state how may be used to compute for any .
(ii) Show that and have the same characteristic equation.
(iii) Show that for any the matrices
are similar. [Hint: if is a basis then so is .]
(b) Using the results of (a), or otherwise, prove that any complex matrix with equal eigenvalues is similar to one of
(c) Consider the matrix
Show that there is a real value such that is an orthogonal matrix. Show that is a rotation and find the axis and angle of the rotation.
Paper 1, Section II, F
Part IA, 2013 commentFix a closed interval . For a bounded function on and a dissection of , how are the lower sum and upper sum defined? Show that .
Suppose is a dissection of such that . Show that
By using the above inequalities or otherwise, show that if and are two dissections of then
For a function and dissection let
If is non-negative and Riemann integrable, show that
[You may use without proof the inequality for all .]
Paper 2, Section I, A
Part IA, 2013 commentSolve the equation
subject to the conditions at .
Paper 2, Section I, A
Part IA, 2013 commentUse the transformation to solve
subject to the conditions and at , where is a positive constant.
Show that when
Paper 2, Section II, A
Part IA, 2013 commentThe function satisfies the equation
Give the definitions of the terms ordinary point, singular point, and regular singular point for this equation.
For the equation
classify the point according to your definitions. Find the series solution about which satisfies
For a second solution with at , consider an expansion
where and . Find and which have and . Comment on near for this second solution.
Paper 2, Section II,
Part IA, 2013 commentConsider the function
Determine the type of each of the nine critical points.
Sketch contours of constant .