Formula for determining bond angle

[Austin Clack]

Is there a universal formula for determining the bond angles of any molecule? If so, is this something we must know for test three?

[Chem_Mod]

There is no "formula," but each type of shape has their own specific bond angles that you'll have to picture in your head and/or memorize. For example, a tetrahedral shape has bond angles of 109.5, and that's a number you should remember.

[Gabriela Aguilar 4H]

It mostly depends on how many electron density areas there are in a shape and in order to give the angle, I would memorize them.

[Kailey Nichols 4B]

We can estimate bond angles based on the molecule's VSEPR shape, however, only experimentally testing for bond angle gives us the actual bond angle between atoms in a molecule.

[Manya Kidambi 3I]

There isn't really a formula, I would just know the values of the main shapes. For example, know that trigonal planar is 120, tetrahedral is 109.5, and if there is a lone pair instead of a bond (such as in trigonal pyramidal), it would be slightly less than 109.5.

[Ashita Tanwar 3H]

Is it possible to tell which molecules have smaller bond angles even when we're not sure exactly what the bond angles are? Like would the size of the atoms in the molecule have an effect on the bond angles, or is it just a matter of how many / what kind of electron pairs there are?

[Lorena Zhang 4E]

There is no formula for determining bond angle. A lot of the times we can only know the approximate bond angles because it differ based on the electron pair repulsion.