Question

How do I calculate where the nodal planes are on any given molecular orbitals?

Answer 1

The covalent bond is due to the mutually sharing of electrons between the two atoms in the molecule. The number of atomic orbitals will be equal to the number of molecular orbitals formed in that. The number of bonding molecular orbitals and the number of antibonding molecular orbitals are equal. The energy of the bonding molecular orbitals is lesser than the energy of the anti-bonding molecular orbitals in the molecular orbital diagram.

Complete answer:
The nodal planes are nothing but the electron density in the molecular orbitals is equal to zero. The nodal planes that arise depend on which orbitals are overlapping in the molecules. We know three axes in the graph. One plane required two axes, in that axis entirely electron density should be zero.
The atomic orbitals are overlapping to give molecular orbitals. There are two types of covalent bonds. There are sigma bonds and pi bonds. The sigma bond arises because of the head-wise overlapping of the atomic orbital in the molecular orbitals. The pi bond arises because of the side-wise overlapping of the atomic orbitals in the molecular orbitals.
The sigma$(\sigma )$, pi$(\pi )$, and delta $(\Delta )$ are the bonding molecular orbitals, and the sigma star $(\sigma *)$, pi star $(\pi *)$, and delta star $(\Delta *)$ are the anti-bonding molecular orbitals. The bond order of the molecule is equal to the difference between the number of electrons in bonding molecular orbitals and the number of electrons in antibonding molecular orbitals in the molecular orbital diagram.

Note:
The covalent bond is important for organic chemistry. Some overlapping of orbitals are also involved in the mutual sharing of electrons in the atom. This overlapping of orbitals involves the mutual sharing of electrons in the atom. These overlapping are divided into two types are head-wise overlapping and sidewise overlapping.