As the bond order increases, how does the bond length change?

Answer 1

Bond order is essentially a measure of the bond strength. It is roughly similar to the actual bond you draw in Lewis structures, with some exceptions seen here.

Bond strength is inversely proportional to the bond length, i.e. the longer the bond, the weaker it is.

This is because a greater internuclear distance is a weaker bonding interaction, since the electron clouds are more spread out (less dense) and thus easier to distort. Distorting the electron cloud is how chemical bonds would be broken, since it introduces some ionic character into the bond by skewing it towards one atom, weakening the bond.

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Answer 2

Axel Alvarado

The bond length decreases with increasing bond order.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.