<p>I have no other way of finding out, because our current chemistry teacher (a last-minute sub. teacher) has absolutely no experience in AP, and simply makes us learn things from the Zumdhal chemistry textbook...which is much too detailed for the AP.</p>
<p>So my question is... is the understanding or antibonding and MO diagrams necessary for the AP exam? </p>
<p>Can anyone help me with what definition of "bond order" the AP exams wants us to go with?
After searching online, I'm finding that there are several definitions that use the MO theory, some that do not.
And according to Wikipedia: Using or not using the MO theory "often but not always yield the same result."</p>
<p>I've never heard of the phrase "antibonding" before, but I will guess that that's when in a reaction the bonds break to form another species (bond energies, bond enthalpies, that sort of thing).</p>
<p>The answer is yes. In fact, I had the very unpleasant task of trying to remember how to do bonding questions on the AP Chem test last year! </p>
<p>MO diagrams. I can't exactly remember what they were, but you do need to know the definitions of terms like bent, trigonal planar, linear, octagonal, stuff like that. </p>
<p>Bond order, according to my old Chemistry book (Kotz and Treichel), says that bond order is "the number of bonding electron pairs shared by two atoms in a molecule." Yes, you should know it. They might not exactly ask what the bond order is, but they may ask if the molecule is polar or non-polar, and you'd have to be familiar with bonding and resonance structures.</p>
<p>Okay, I just looked up Molecular Orbital theory in my book. I'm going to lean more on the idea that knowing all that theory won't be very important. I certainly don't remember seeing this on the exam last year; if there was a little bit of this it was indeed very little. But I'm sure the questions and topics vary a little from year to year. If you know about resonance structures, bond order, bond strength (shorter bonds = stronger), sigma and pi bonds (which are so much easier to understand than they seem), and memorize the list of molecular structures, and know about bond enthalpies and Lewis dot diagrams, you should be fine.</p>
<p>MO theory is not part of the AP curriculum. It used to be, but hasn't been for several years.</p>
<p>A formal definition of "bond order" usually uses MO theory, but for practical purposes, a single bond has a bond order of 1, and a double bond has a bond order of 2.</p>
<p>I don't know what edition of Zumdahl you are using, but for 6th edition, you need to know essentially everything in chp.8, but only hybridization and sigma/pi bonds from chp. 9. The rest of chapter 9 (MO theory) can be skipped.</p>
<p>im glad to hear we dont need to know it, my teacher wasnt sure so he basically only taught us how to do it for hydrogen and helium, anything with a higher atomic number was too confusing</p>
<p>you only need to know the spd stuff.....i don't really remember it, but like how to tell from the compound's lewis structure what thing it is..like sp or sp3, etc.</p>
<p>sorry for being so vague, i've forgotten all my chemistry. ap classes tend to do that to you since the pace is so fast.</p>