Have you ever wondered how an airplane that weighs 500 tons is able to get off the ground and fly? What forces allow flight of heavier-than-air objects?

Did you know two aviators from Cass County set altitude records? Or that a Cass County pilot flew one of the planes on the first around-the-world flight in 1924?

Staff from The Museum at Southwestern Michigan College will lead an interactive program on aviation and reveal the answers to these questions next week during Dowagiac’s “Summer in the City” Festival, as they host an interactive program for families at the Children’s Entertainment Tent on Friday, July 30.

The hands-on workshop will be presented from noon to 2 p.m. and again from 3 to 5 p.m. at the tent on Commercial Street.

Tom Caskey, the museum’s exhibit designer, will lead an activity that explores the four forces of nature that enable flight.

Caskey has experimented with physics and science for decades and his program will have children acting as one of the four forces to demonstrate how liftoff occurs. Another experiment demonstrates aerodynamics and how the design of aircraft can influence how well it flies.

Children will have the opportunity to do some design work to eliminate “drag” and allow for better crafts.

Caskey has been employed by the museum since 1993 and has long been a major proponent of hands-on education.

His creative mind has been behind interactive exhibits that have made the Museum at SMC a fun experience for school groups and families with children for 17 years.

Jennifer Quail, museum educator, will guide children along the harrowing 175-day journey of Cassopolis native Leigh Wade. The story of Wade has captivated Quail since she began working for the museum in 2009.

Wade piloted one of four open-cockpit airplanes that left Seattle in 1924 on a long odyssey across the globe, making stops for provisions in oceans, deserts and in nations large and small.

Quail’s interactive mapping activity will prove fun for children as they take in trivia about the many stops made by Wade and the other pilots.

After several years as a museum educator in locations as diverse as Mackinac and Boston, Quail moved to Dowagiac in 2009 and immediately appreciated the stories of Cass County aviation pioneers Capt. Iven Kincheloe and Leigh Wade.