How does one go about calculating average bond order? For some reason i couldn't find it in the book.

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

Answers

nevermind .. dumb question

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

hah ... scratch that last comment, i sitll don't know ... i know what average bond energies are .. but not the orders. Are they the same?

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

Bond order is the difference betweent he number of bonding electrons and the number of antibonding electrons, divided by 2.

B.O. = (# bonding e-'s - # antiboding e-'s)/2

you divide by 2 because you think of bonds as PAIRS of electrons, bond order is an indication of bond strength. The larger the bond order the greater the bond strength. It is described on pg 646-7 in the zumdahl text.

-- Anonymous, April 19, 2000

Help? How do you find out the # of bonding electrons? For problem 956262931 which has 0(3), I drew the little Lewis diagram things but how do I know what the most important form is? I thought there were 8 bonding electrons and 16 antibonding electrons but apparently this is wrong. The book is not helping me and I don't really understand this at all.....

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000