MO? Bond Order?

[AaronBautista 3E]

Can anyone explain the concept of molecular orbitals? I'm having a hard time conceptualizing this, what's the significance of these? As for bond order, do greater bond order values suggest that the bonds are shorter in length?

[Wendy_Xie]

If you understand the orbital of atom, which is just the s p d f things, then you will understand MO. MO is basically the same thing, it's just in a molecule instead of in an atom.

The larger the bond order is, the stronger and shorter the bond will be.

[amyjunus1A]

Just how we use atomic orbitals to gain a general sense of where the electron may be located, we would also want to gain a general sense of where an electron may be located in a molecule. However, since a molecule contains more bonding, we cannot just use the "simple" s, p, d, f, etc. orbitals and we create a new ordering (MOT). It's actually really cool if you think about it!

As for bond order, I think it helps to think of the bond order as the number of bonds (BO = 3, 3 bonds between atoms). With this in mind, we already have learned that the more bonds between atoms equates to a stronger bond at a shorter length. Therefore with that logic, the higher the BO, the shorter the length and the stronger the bond.

I know that Wendy_Xie explained it very well above, but hopefully my way of seeing things helps a little.