Challenge 1: A Steadily Rising Baseline After Each Garbage Collection — Solution Walkthrough

What this pattern suggests:

Per this chapter's own material, this is the real warning sign of a
memory leak. A healthy heap shows a sawtooth pattern that returns
close to its own baseline after each garbage collection — this
scenario instead shows each collection returning to a progressively
HIGHER baseline than the one before it, meaning some objects are
being retained across collections rather than being properly released
when they're no longer needed.

Why this specifically points at a leak rather than normal behavior:

Garbage collection is supposed to reclaim memory used by objects
nothing still references. If the baseline keeps climbing despite
repeated collection, something in the app is holding onto a reference
to objects that should have become eligible for collection — a
classic leak pattern, not simply normal memory usage growing and
shrinking as expected.

The next investigative step:

Capture a heap dump at a point where the baseline has already risen
noticeably, per this chapter's own explanation that a heap dump shows
exactly what's still allocated and, critically, what's still holding a
reference to it — the concrete next step for identifying which
specific objects are being retained and tracing back to the code
responsible for holding onto them longer than it should.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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This exercise checks that the specific "rising baseline after
collection" pattern from this chapter is recognized as a leak
indicator (not just generic memory usage), and that the correct next
diagnostic step (a heap dump, not simply watching the graph longer) is
understood.