(a) The differential equation
is linear, so we can use the integrating factor method. We have I.F.
so that multiplying both sides by
gives
Integrate both sides. (Integrate by parts twice on the right side; I'll omit the details.)
Solve for
.
Given that
, we find
and the particular solution to the initial value problem is
As
gets large, the exponential term will converge to 0. We have
which means the trigonometric terms will oscillate between
. So overall, the solution will oscillate between
for large
.
(b) We want the smallest
such that
, i.e.
Using a calculator, the smallest solution seems to be around