The Power of Lift

December 6, 2019 was my daughter’s first time flying and her experience on Southwest Flight 2551 that day was nothing more than memorable.  On our first flight departing Houston, the pilot invited her to sit in the cockpit after we landed. She was so excited and happily tromped along as we boarded our connecting flight to Ann Arbor.

Mid-flight, my daughter then asked me, “Mommy, what keeps the plane up in the air? Why doesn’t gravity pull it down?” I told her I didn’t know how to explain it exactly and thought that was the end of that.  When we disembarked, she saw the pilot, and repeated the question with an air of inquisitiveness and amazement.  And, even though she was five, he got down on one knee, looked into her eyes, and explained how air travels over the wings of the plane faster than under it and that’s what makes it stay sucked up in the sky like a straw, closing by saying “Remember, it’s called the Bernoulli Principle, and tell your teacher you learned about it.”

What physics teaches us is that we all need the power of lift to keep us going. Objects gain potential energy simply by gaining height against gravity. As humans, we need stand on the shoulders of others to lift us from what might weigh us down. The power of collective lift is real, and something we should all strive for more of in our daily interactions with others.