Part IA, {{ year }}
Part IA 2019
Paper 1, Section I, E
Part IA, 2019 commentState the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem.
Let be a sequence of non-zero real numbers. Which of the following conditions is sufficient to ensure that converges? Give a proof or counter-example as appropriate.
(i) for some real number .
(ii) for some non-zero real number .
(iii) has no convergent subsequence.
Paper 1, Section I, F
Part IA, 2019 commentLet be a real power series that diverges for at least one value of . Show that there exists a non-negative real number such that converges absolutely whenever and diverges whenever .
Find, with justification, such a number for each of the following real power series:
(i) ;
(ii) .
Paper 2, Section II, C
Part IA, 2019 commentTwo cups of tea at temperatures and cool in a room at ambient constant temperature . Initially .
Cup 1 has cool milk added instantaneously at and then hot water added at a constant rate after which is modelled as follows
whereas cup 2 is left undisturbed and evolves as follows
where and are the Dirac delta and Heaviside functions respectively, and is a positive constant.
(a) Derive expressions for when and for when .
(b) Show for that
(c) Derive an expression for for .
(d) At what time is ?
(e) Find how behaves for and explain your result.
Paper 2, Section II, C
Part IA, 2019 commentConsider the nonlinear system
(a) Show that is a constant of the motion.
(b) Find all the critical points of the system and analyse their stability. Sketch the phase portrait including the special contours with value .
(c) Find an explicit expression for in the solution which satisfies at . At what time does it reach the point
Paper 4, Section I, A
Part IA, 2019 commentA rocket of mass moving at speed and ejecting fuel behind it at a constant speed relative to the rocket, is subject to an external force . Considering a small time interval , derive the rocket equation
In deep space where , how much faster does the rocket go if it burns half of its mass in fuel?
Paper 4, Section I, A
Part IA, 2019 commentGalileo releases a cannonball of mass from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa, a vertical height above the ground. Ignoring the rotation of the Earth but assuming that the cannonball experiences a quadratic drag force whose magnitude is (where is the speed of the cannonball), find the time for it to hit the ground in terms of and , the acceleration due to gravity. [You may assume that is constant.]
Paper 4, Section II, A
Part IA, 2019 commentIn an alien invasion, a flying saucer hovers at a fixed point , a height far above the White House, which is at point . A wrecking ball of mass is attached to one end of a light inextensible rod, also of length . The other end of the rod is attached to the flying saucer. The wrecking ball is initially at rest at point , and the angle is . At , the acceleration due to gravity is . Assume that the rotation of the Earth can be neglected and that the only force acting is Earth's gravity.
(a) Under the approximations that gravity acts everywhere parallel to the line and that the acceleration due to Earth's gravity is constant throughout the space through which the wrecking ball is travelling, find the speed with which the wrecking ball hits the White House, in terms of the constants introduced above.
(b) Taking into account the fact that gravity is non-uniform and acts toward the centre of the Earth, find the speed with which the wrecking ball hits the White House in terms of the constants introduced above and , where is the radius of the Earth, which you may assume is exactly spherical.
(c) Finally, show that
where and are constants, which you should determine.
Paper 4, Section II, A
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) A particle of mass and positive charge moves with velocity in a region in which the magnetic field is constant and no other forces act, where . Initially, the particle is at position and . Write the equation of motion of the particle and then solve it to find as a function of time . Sketch its path in .
(b) For , three point particles, each of charge , are fixed at , and , respectively. Another point particle of mass and charge is constrained to move in the plane and suffers Coulomb repulsion from each fixed charge. Neglecting any magnetic fields,
(i) Find the position of an equilibrium point.
(ii) By finding the form of the electric potential near this point, deduce that the equilibrium is stable.
(iii) Consider small displacements of the point particle from the equilibrium point. By resolving forces in the directions and , show that the frequency of oscillation is
where is a constant which you should find.
[You may assume that if two identical charges are separated by a distance then the repulsive Coulomb force experienced by each of the charges is , where is a constant.]
Paper 4, Section II, A
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) Writing a mass dimension as , a time dimension as , a length dimension as and a charge dimension as , write, using relations that you know, the dimensions of:
(i) force
(ii) electric field
(b) In the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, a proton of rest mass and charge is accelerated by a constant electric field . At time , the particle is at rest at the origin.
Writing the proton's position as and including relativistic effects, calculate . Use your answers to part (a) to check that the dimensions in your expression are correct.
Sketch a graph of versus , commenting on the limit.
Calculate as an explicit function of and find the non-relativistic limit at small times . What kind of motion is this?
(c) At a later time , an observer in the laboratory frame sees a cosmic microwave photon of energy hit the accelerated proton, leaving only a particle of mass in the final state. In its rest frame, the takes a time to decay. How long does it take to decay in the laboratory frame as a function of and , the speed of light in a vacuum?
Paper 4, Section II, A
Part IA, 2019 commentAn inertial frame and another reference frame have a common origin , and rotates with angular velocity vector with respect to . Derive the results (a) and (b) below, where dot denotes a derivative with respect to time :
(a) The rates of change of an arbitrary vector in frames and are related by
(b) The accelerations in and are related by
where is the position vector relative to .
Just after passing the South Pole, a ski-doo of mass is travelling on a constant longitude with speed . Find the magnitude and direction of the sideways component of apparent force experienced by the ski-doo. [The sideways component is locally along the surface of the Earth and perpendicular to the motion of the ski-doo.]
Paper 3, Section I, D
Part IA, 2019 commentProve that two elements of are conjugate if and only if they have the same cycle type.
Describe a condition on the centraliser (in ) of a permutation that ensures the conjugacy class of in is the same as the conjugacy class of in . Justify your answer.
How many distinct conjugacy classes are there in ?
Paper 3, Section , D
Part IA, 2019 commentWhat is the orthogonal group ? What is the special orthogonal group
Show that every element of has an eigenvector with eigenvalue
Is it true that every element of is either a rotation or a reflection? Justify your answer.
Paper 1, Section II, D
Part IA, 2019 commentLet be a function that is continuous at at least one point . Suppose further that satisfies
for all . Show that is continuous on .
Show that there exists a constant such that for all .
Suppose that is a continuous function defined on and that satisfies the equation
for all . Show that is either identically zero or everywhere positive. What is the general form for ?
Paper 3, Section II, D
Part IA, 2019 commentLet and be subgroups of a group satisfying the following two properties.
(i) All elements of can be written in the form for some and some .
(ii) .
Prove that and are normal subgroups of if and only if all elements of commute with all elements of .
State and prove Cauchy's Theorem.
Let and be distinct primes. Prove that an abelian group of order is isomorphic to . Is it true that all abelian groups of order are isomorphic to ?
Paper 3, Section II, D
Part IA, 2019 commentState and prove Lagrange's Theorem.
Hence show that if is a finite group and then the order of divides the order of .
How many elements are there of order 3 in the following groups? Justify your answers.
(a) , where denotes the cyclic group of order .
(b) the dihedral group of order .
(c) the symmetric group of degree 7 .
(d) the alternating group of degree 7 .
Paper 3, Section II, D
Part IA, 2019 commentState and prove the first isomorphism theorem. [You may assume that kernels of homomorphisms are normal subgroups and images are subgroups.]
Let be a group with subgroup and normal subgroup . Prove that is a subgroup of and is a normal subgroup of . Further, show that is a normal subgroup of .
Prove that is isomorphic to .
If and are both normal subgroups of must be a normal subgroup of ?
If and are subgroups of , but not normal subgroups, must be a subgroup of ?
Justify your answers.
Paper 3, Section II, D
Part IA, 2019 commentLet be the group of Möbius transformations of and let be the group of all complex matrices of determinant 1 .
Show that the map given by
is a surjective homomorphism. Find its kernel.
Show that any not equal to the identity is conjugate to a Möbius map where either with or . [You may use results about matrices in as long as they are clearly stated.]
Show that any non-identity Möbius map has one or two fixed points. Also show that if is a Möbius map with just one fixed point then as for any . [You may assume that Möbius maps are continuous.]
Paper 4, Section I, E
Part IA, 2019 commentFind all solutions to the simultaneous congruences
Paper 4, Section , E
Part IA, 2019 commentShow that the series
converge. Determine in each case whether the limit is a rational number. Justify your answers.
Paper 4, Section II, E
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) State and prove Fermat's theorem. Use it to compute .
(b) The Fibonacci numbers are defined by , and for all . Prove by induction that for all we have
(c) Let and let be an odd prime dividing . Which of the following statements are true, and which can be false? Justify your answers.
(i) If is odd then .
(ii) If is even then .
Paper 4, Section II, E
Part IA, 2019 commentState the inclusion-exclusion principle.
Let be an integer. Let and
where is the largest number dividing all of . Let be the relation on where if .
(a) Show that
where the product is over all primes dividing .
(b) Show that if then there exist integers with .
(c) Show that if then there exists an integer with and . [Hint: Consider , where are as in part (b).] Deduce that is an equivalence relation.
(d) What is the size of the equivalence class containing Show that all equivalence classes have the same size, and deduce that the number of equivalence classes is
Paper 4, Section II,
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) Let be a function. Show that the following statements are equivalent.
(i) is injective.
(ii) For every subset we have .
(iii) For every pair of subsets we have .
(b) Let be an injection. Show that for some subsets such that
[Here denotes the -fold composite of with itself.]
Paper 4, Section II, E
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) What is a countable set? Let be sets with countable. Show that if is an injection then is countable. Deduce that and are countable. Show too that a countable union of countable sets is countable.
(b) Show that, in the plane, any collection of pairwise disjoint circles with rational radius is countable.
(c) A lollipop is any subset of the plane obtained by translating, rotating and scaling (by any factor ) the set
What happens if in part (b) we replace 'circles with rational radius' by 'lollipops'?
Paper 1, Section II, D
Part IA, 2019 commentState and prove the Intermediate Value Theorem.
State the Mean Value Theorem.
Suppose that the function is differentiable everywhere in some open interval containing , and that . By considering the functions and defined by
and
or otherwise, show that there is a subinterval such that
Deduce that there exists with .
Paper 2, Section I, 3F
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) Prove that as .
(b) State Stirling's approximation for !.
(c) A school party of boys and girls travel on a red bus and a green bus. Each bus can hold children. The children are distributed at random between the buses.
Let be the event that the boys all travel on the red bus and the girls all travel on the green bus. Show that
Paper 2, Section I, F
Part IA, 2019 commentLet and be independent exponential random variables each with parameter 1 . Write down the joint density function of and .
Let and . Find the joint density function of and .
Are and independent? Briefly justify your answer.
Paper 2, Section II, F
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) State the axioms that must be satisfied by a probability measure on a probability space .
Let and be events with . Define the conditional probability .
Let be pairwise disjoint events with for all and . Starting from the axioms, show that
and deduce Bayes' theorem.
(b) Two identical urns contain white balls and black balls. Urn I contains 45 white balls and 30 black balls. Urn II contains 12 white balls and 36 black balls. You do not know which urn is which.
(i) Suppose you select an urn and draw one ball at random from it. The ball is white. What is the probability that you selected Urn I?
(ii) Suppose instead you draw one ball at random from each urn. One of the balls is white and one is black. What is the probability that the white ball came from Urn I?
(c) Now suppose there are identical urns containing white balls and black balls, and again you do not know which urn is which. Each urn contains 1 white ball. The th urn contains black balls . You select an urn and draw one ball at random from it. The ball is white. Let be the probability that if you replace this ball and again draw a ball at random from the same urn then the ball drawn on the second occasion is also white. Show that as
Paper 2, Section II, F
Part IA, 2019 commentLet and be positive integers with and let be a real number. A random walk on the integers starts at . At each step, the walk moves up 1 with probability and down 1 with probability . Find, with proof, the probability that the walk hits before it hits 0 .
Patricia owes a very large sum !) of money to a member of a violent criminal gang. She must return the money this evening to avoid terrible consequences but she only has !. She goes to a casino and plays a game with the probability of her winning being . If she bets on the game and wins then her is returned along with a further ; if she loses then her is lost.
The rules of the casino allow Patricia to play the game repeatedly until she runs out of money. She may choose the amount that she bets to be any integer a with , but it must be the same amount each time. What choice of would be best and why?
What choice of would be best, and why, if instead the probability of her winning the game is ?
Paper 2, Section II, F
Part IA, 2019 commentRecall that a random variable in is bivariate normal or Gaussian if is normal for all . Let be bivariate normal.
(a) (i) Show that if is a real matrix then is bivariate normal.
(ii) Let and . Find the moment generating function of and deduce that the distribution of a bivariate normal random variable is uniquely determined by and .
(iii) Let and for . Let be the correlation of and . Write down in terms of some or all of and . If , why must and be independent?
For each , find . Hence show that for some normal random variable in that is independent of and some that should be specified.
(b) A certain species of East Anglian goblin has left arm of mean length with standard deviation , and right arm of mean length with standard deviation . The correlation of left- and right-arm-length of a goblin is . You may assume that the distribution of left- and right-arm-lengths can be modelled by a bivariate normal distribution. What is the probability that a randomly selected goblin has longer right arm than left arm?
[You may give your answer in terms of the distribution function of a random variable . That is, .J
Paper 2, Section II, F
Part IA, 2019 commentLet be events in some probability space. Let be the number of that occur (so is a random variable). Show that
and
[Hint: Write where .]
A collection of lightbulbs are arranged in a circle. Each bulb is on independently with probability . Let be the number of bulbs such that both that bulb and the next bulb clockwise are on. Find and .
Let be the event that there is at least one pair of adjacent bulbs that are both on.
Use Markov's inequality to show that if then as .
Use Chebychev's inequality to show that if then as .
Paper 3, Section I, B
Part IA, 2019 commentApply the divergence theorem to the vector field where is an arbitrary constant vector and is a scalar field, to show that
where is a volume bounded by the surface and is the outward pointing surface element.
Verify that this result holds when and is the spherical volume . [You may use the result that , where and are the usual angular coordinates in spherical polars and the components of are with respect to standard Cartesian axes.]
Paper 3, Section I, B
Part IA, 2019 commentLet
Show that is an exact differential, clearly stating any criteria that you use.
Show that for any path between and
Paper 3, Section II, B
Part IA, 2019 commentDefine the Jacobian, , of the one-to-one transformation
Give a careful explanation of the result
where
and the region maps under the transformation to the region .
Consider the region defined by
and
where and are positive constants.
Let be the intersection of with the plane . Write down the conditions for to be non-empty. Sketch the geometry of in , clearly specifying the curves that define its boundaries and points that correspond to minimum and maximum values of and of on the boundaries.
Use a suitable change of variables to evaluate the volume of the region , clearly explaining the steps in your calculation.
Paper 3, Section II, B
Part IA, 2019 commentFor a given set of coordinate axes the components of a 2 nd rank tensor are given by .
(a) Show that if is an eigenvalue of the matrix with elements then it is also an eigenvalue of the matrix of the components of in any other coordinate frame.
Show that if is a symmetric tensor then the multiplicity of the eigenvalues of the matrix of components of is independent of coordinate frame.
A symmetric tensor in three dimensions has eigenvalues , with .
Show that the components of can be written in the form
where are the components of a unit vector.
(b) The tensor is defined by
where is the surface of the unit sphere, is the position vector of a point on , and is a constant.
Deduce, with brief reasoning, that the components of can be written in the form (1) with . [You may quote any results derived in part (a).]
Using suitable spherical polar coordinates evaluate and .
Explain how to deduce the values of and from and . [You do not need to write out the detailed formulae for these quantities.]
Paper 1, Section II, E
Part IA, 2019 commentLet and be sequences of positive real numbers. Let .
(a) Show that if and converge then so does .
(b) Show that if converges then converges. Is the converse true?
(c) Show that if diverges then diverges. Is the converse true?
For part (c), it may help to show that for any there exist with
Paper 3, Section II, B
Part IA, 2019 commentShow that for a vector field
Hence find an , with , such that . [Hint: Note that is not defined uniquely. Choose your expression for to be as simple as possible.
Now consider the cone . Let be the curved part of the surface of the cone and be the flat part of the surface of the cone .
Using the variables and as used in cylindrical polars to describe points on , give an expression for the surface element in terms of and .
Evaluate .
What does the divergence theorem predict about the two surface integrals and where in each case the vector is taken outwards from the cone?
What does Stokes theorem predict about the integrals and (defined as in the previous paragraph) and the line integral where is the circle and the integral is taken in the anticlockwise sense, looking from the positive direction?
Evaluate and , making your method clear and verify that each of these predictions holds.
Paper 3, Section II, B
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) The function satisfies in the volume and on , the surface bounding .
Show that everywhere in .
The function satisfies in and is specified on . Show that for all functions such that on
Hence show that
(b) The function satisfies in the spherical region , with on . The function is spherically symmetric, i.e. .
Suppose that the equation and boundary conditions are satisfied by a spherically symmetric function . Show that
Hence find the function when is given by , with constant.
Explain how the results obtained in part (a) of the question imply that is the only solution of which satisfies the specified boundary condition on .
Use your solution and the results obtained in part (a) of the question to show that, for any function such that on and on ,
where is the region .
Paper 1, Section I,
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) If
where , what is the value of ?
(b) Evaluate
(c) Find a complex number such that
(d) Interpret geometrically the curve defined by the set of points satisfying
in the complex -plane.
Paper 1, Section I, A
Part IA, 2019 commentIf is an by matrix, define its determinant .
Find the following in terms of and a scalar , clearly showing your argument:
(i) , where is obtained from by multiplying one row by .
(ii) .
(iii) , where is obtained from by switching row and row .
(iv) , where is obtained from by adding times column to column .
Paper 1, Section II, C
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) Use index notation to prove .
Hence simplify
(i) ,
(ii) .
(b) Give the general solution for and of the simultaneous equations
Show in particular that and must lie at opposite ends of a diameter of a sphere whose centre and radius should be found.
(c) If two pairs of opposite edges of a tetrahedron are perpendicular, show that the third pair are also perpendicular to each other. Show also that the sum of the lengths squared of two opposite edges is the same for each pair.
Paper 1, Section II,
Part IA, 2019 commentLet be the standard basis vectors of . A second set of vectors are defined with respect to the standard basis by
The are the elements of the matrix . State the condition on under which the set forms a basis of .
Define the matrix that, for a given linear transformation , gives the relation between the components of any vector and those of the corresponding , with the components specified with respect to the standard basis.
Show that the relation between the matrix and the matrix of the same transformation with respect to the second basis is
Consider the matrix
Find a matrix such that is diagonal. Give the elements of and demonstrate explicitly that the relation between and holds.
Give the elements of for any positive integer .
Paper 1, Section II, 7B
Part IA, 2019 comment(a) Let be an matrix. Define the characteristic polynomial of . [Choose a sign convention such that the coefficient of in the polynomial is equal to State and justify the relation between the characteristic polynomial and the eigenvalues of . Why does have at least one eigenvalue?
(b) Assume that has distinct eigenvalues. Show that . [Each term in corresponds to a term in
(c) For a general matrix and integer , show that , where Hint: You may find it helpful to note the factorization of .]
Prove that if has an eigenvalue then has an eigenvalue where .
Paper 1, Section II, A
Part IA, 2019 commentThe exponential of a square matrix is defined as
where is the identity matrix. [You do not have to consider issues of convergence.]
(a) Calculate the elements of and , where
and is a real number.
(b) Show that and that
(c) Consider the matrices
Calculate:
(i) ,
(ii) .
(d) Defining
find the elements of the following matrices, where is a natural number:
(i)
(ii)
[Your answers to parts and should be in closed form, i.e. not given as series.]
Paper 1, Section II, F
Part IA, 2019 commentLet be a bounded function. Define the upper and lower integrals of . What does it mean to say that is Riemann integrable? If is Riemann integrable, what is the Riemann integral ?
Which of the following functions are Riemann integrable? For those that are Riemann integrable, find . Justify your answers.
(i)
(ii) ,
where has a base-3 expansion containing a 1;
[Hint: You may find it helpful to note, for example, that as one of the base-3 expansions of is
(iii) ,
where has a base expansion containing infinitely many .
Paper 2, Section I, C
Part IA, 2019 commentThe function satisfies the inhomogeneous second-order linear differential equation
Find the solution that satisfies the conditions that and is bounded as .
Paper 2, Section I,
Part IA, 2019 commentConsider the first order system
to be solved for , where the matrix and are all independent of time. Show that if is not an eigenvalue of then there is a solution of the form , with constant.
For , given
find the general solution to (1).
Paper 2, Section II,
Part IA, 2019 commentConsider the problem of solving
subject to the initial conditions using a discrete approach where is computed at discrete times, where and
(a) By using Taylor expansions around , derive the centred-difference formula
where the value of should be found.
(b) Find the general solution of and show that this is the discrete version of the corresponding general solution to .
(c) The fully discretized version of the differential equation (1) is
By finding a particular solution first, write down the general solution to the difference equation (2). For the solution which satisfies the discretized initial conditions and , find the error in in terms of only.
Paper 2, Section II,
Part IA, 2019 commentFind all power series solutions of the form to the equation
for a real constant. [It is sufficient to give a recurrence relationship between coefficients.]
Impose the condition and determine those values of for which your power series gives polynomial solutions (i.e., for sufficiently large). Give the values of for which the corresponding polynomials have degree less than 6 , and compute these polynomials. Hence, or otherwise, find a polynomial solution of
satisfying .