Disney’s 2013 animated musical fantasy film, Frozen, was an instant box office hit, earning a total of $1,280,802,282 and single handedly heralding a major shift in the public’s perception of ice. The film follows princess Anna, who journeys alongside an iceman (works with ice), a reindeer (lives in ice), and a snowman (is ice) to find her sister Elsa, whose icy powers cursed their kingdom with an eternal winter.
My main issue with the film stems from the fact that ice is depicted in a negative light; I, personally, would love to live in a permanent ice kingdom and fail to see why so many citizens rebelled against it. But that is not all.
Real ice-lovers will know that ice may appear as any one of the 19 known solid crystalline phases of water. In what is arguably the largest oversight of the past six centuries, Disney failed to specify exactly which of these phases Frozen’s ice exists at. This omission makes it impossible to accurately estimate the true depths of Elsa’s power. As a result, I am instead forced to turn to the chemistry of ice itself to make my best estimate.
For the uneducated, ice possesses a crystalline structure that consists of a covalent bond between one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms. This type of bond is a weak bond, which suggests Elsa’s power was actually relatively weak. In conclusion, it is therefore clear that her curse on her kingdom should have been easily reversible, rendering the premise of Frozen entirely redundant.