Untitled - Kelly Walsh High School

152 CHEMISTRY FOR THE UTTERLY CONFUSED
of electrons in bonding MOs minus the number of electrons in antibonding
MOs, divided by 2. For H 2 in Figure 10-5, the bond order would be (2 0)/2
1. A stable bonding situation exists between two atoms when the bond order is
greater than zero. The larger the bond order, the stronger the bond.
When two sets of p-orbitals combine, one sigma bonding and one sigma antibonding
MO are formed along with two bonding pi MOs and two pi antibonding
(p*) MOs. Figure 10-6 shows the MO diagram for O 2. For the sake of
Figure 10-6 Molecular orbital diagram of valence shell electrons
of O 2