[Venus]

I am really confused about bond order. I can figure it out with some things, but then I get to certain compounds and I just don't get it.

For example, in class we looked at the bond order of SO2. I got that it is 1.5, but maybe I did it wrong. Is it 1.5 because it has 3 bonds and two different regions or 1.5 because it has 3 bonds and 2 different structures that it can be?

For SO2 they didn't ask us about specific parts, but then we had one asking about the bond order of NN and NO in N2O. That's where I got confused. The bond order for NN was 3 and for NO it was 1. Is it that because N had a triple bond to the other N and there was only a single bond to O or is there another reason? If they had asked what the bond order of N2O was would it have been something different... like 1.3?

Also then we had C2H2 and I had no idea how to figure it out, but the answer was 2. Is it two because there is a double bond between the carbons? Why don't the hydrogens matter when finding the bond order?

I think my definition of bond order is completely wrong because at first I thought you figure it out by using this equation (# of all of the bonds / # of regions ) and that works for SO2, but I didn't know how that would work for the parts in N2O. I think I just need a formal idea of how exactly you figure things out.