THE EFFECT OF THE STRUCTURAL DIMENSION OF MAHOGANY SEED ON ITS
TERMINAL VELOCITY
University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines
Abstract
This paper tried to explore on the vertical
terminal velocity of falling mahogany seeds along
with its relationship to the seed’s structural
dimensions, in terms of mass, length and width.
One hundred Mahogany seeds collected in the
perimeter of USC Talamban was used, which was
subjected for identifying its terminal velocity using
the a high speed camera and Labview software.
The finding suggests that among the three it is the
width and mass that is related to terminal velocity,
however width is negatively correlated while mass
is a positive indicator in predicting for its terminal
velocity.
1. Introduction
Different plants have varied mechanisms in
the dispersal of their seeds. Some tall trees have
developed a special way of dispersing seeds in the
environment. These species have seeds which
were equipped with wings to facilitate dispersal by
wind 1. The mahogany tree (Swietenia mahogany)
is an example of such species which can be found
around the University of San Carlos Talamban
campus. Its seeds do not travel straight downward
but instead follow complicated trajectories as they
fall. This paper presents the experimental results
on the investigation of the vertical terminal
velocity of falling mahogany seeds along with its
relationship to the seed’s structural dimensions,
namely, mass, length and width.
2. Theory
The motion of a falling body is governed by
Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion;
F = ma (1)
As a mahogany seed falls in air, there are two
forces acting on it: its weight mg and the drag
force due to the air Fd. As weight points
downward, the drag force, on the other hand,
points upward as it always opposes the velocity of
the object. Equation 1 then becomes:
mg – Fd = ma (2)
where, Fd is the magnitude of the drag force,
which depends on v, the speed of the object. The
weight is constant in magnitude while the
magnitude of the drag force depends on the
object’s velocity. When the drag force equals the
weight, the object no longer accelerates and
continues to fall with constant velocity. This
velocity is called the terminal velocity vt of the
seed.
Fd = mg (3)
The theoretical and computational sciences
and engineering group of the Department of
Physics in University of San Carlos established an
aerodynamic model for the flight of the mahogany
winged seed. The predictive model computes 1.45
m/s vertical terminal velocity with a 1% error as
confirmed from the experimental value, taking
into account the length and the mass of the seed. 2
However, this paper will not investigate
further this predictive model established in the
previous paper, but will instead focus on the
empirical investigation of the terminal velocity of
the mahogany seeds. It will further explore
possible relationships with terminal velocity to the
seed’s mass, length and width.
3. Experimental Set-up
The experimental set-up, as shown in Figure 1,
is composed of a high speed camera that is
connected to a pre-made LabVIEW program that
can adjust the threshold of the camera as well as
the area of interest. The data from the camera is
then exported as a position-time data to Microsoft
Excel for analysis.
mahogany seed
B
l
a
c
k camera
s LAB view Program
c
r
e
 Fig. 1. Experimental set-up

length is not related to terminal velocity. It is the

4. Methodology
The mahogany samples were dried and then
spray-painted with white to stand out from the
black background. The mass, length and width of
each mahogany sample was then measured. For
the LabVIEW program, the range of the area of
interest was then selected and then adjusted, and
the threshold of the camera calibrated. The
mahogany seed was then dropped at a certain
measured height as the camera starts recording the
position-time data of the seed simultaneously. The
same procedure is repeated for each of the
mahogany seed sample. The terminal velocity for
each mahogany seed sample is then analyzed from
the data generated by this set-up.
width, and mass that is significantly related to
terminal velocity at 95% confidence level.
However, examining further the values, the result
shows that the width of the seeds is negatively
correlated with terminal velocity, thus can be
inferred that not so wide seeds can higher terminal
velocity, while wider seeds have lower terminal
velocity.
Thus from the table it can be said that only
the mass of the mahogany seed can be considered
as predictor for its terminal velocity.
The model generated in the regression
analysis is:
Terminal Velocity (m/s) = 1.654
- 0.0516 Length (cm) - 0.2017 Width (cm)
+ 0.941 Mass (g)
There is a constant value of 1.654 which is
not due to any of the identified factors, it clearly
shows that there are some aspects in the structural
dimension of a mahogany seed that has yet to be
accounted to3.

References:
5. Results and Conclusion
After collating and analyzing the data the
[1] Tamme, Riin, Lars Götzenberger, Martin
following result was extracted, showing the effect Zobel, James M. Bullock, Danny AP
of structural dimension in terms of length, width, Hooftman, Ants Kaasik, and Meelis Pärtel.
and mass to the terminal velocity of the mahogany "Predicting species' maximum dispersal
distances from simple plant
seeds. The data was treated using regression
traits." Ecology 95, no. 2 (2014): 505-513.
analysis as shown in the table below.
[2] Camposano, A. V. C., N. C. Virtudes, R. E.
Term Coef SE T- P- S. Otadoy, and R. Violanda. "Vertical and
rotational motion of mahogany seed."
Coef Value Value In IOP Conference Series: Materials
Constant 1.654 0.34 4.87 0.000 Science and Engineering, vol. 79, no. 1, p.
Length -0.0516 0.0357 -1.45 0.151 012006. IOP Publishing, 2015.
(cm)
[3] Rao, Mukul, Dhruv C. Hoysall, and
Width -0.2017 0.0946 -2.13 0.036
Jagadeesh Gopalan. "Mahogany seed-a
(cm) step forward in deciphering
Mass (g) 0.941 0.262 3.6 0.001 autorotation." Current Science 106, no. 8
(2014): 1101-1109.
Among the three structural dimensions of a
mahogany seed, it can be seen in the table that