molecular orbital diagrams can be used to determine the bond order of a molecule. Now, bond order itself is just a measurement of the number of electrons involved in bonds between two elements. We're going to stay here. A bond order of greater than zero means that the compound is stable and it exists. And we can also say that as the bond order increases the stability and strength of a bond also increases. Now remember there is an inverse relationship between the strengthening of the bond and the length of a bond. So if your strength is increasing, that means that the length of your bond is decreasing. Now we're also going to say that a bond order of zero means that the compound is unstable and it doesn't exist now. How exactly do we calculate our bond order? Well, we set up a molecular orbital diagram and we distribute our electrons within the bonding molecular orbital's and the anti bonding molecular orbital. And once we do this we can use the bond order formula. And here it says that the bond order equals half your bonding electrons. So those electrons found within molecular bonding orbital's minus your anti bonding electrons. These are your electrons that are found within your anti bonding molecular orbital. So again, once you set up your M. O diagram, you'd use that to help fill in this bond order formula to find the bond order of any particular molecule