The reply was swift. At 52 seconds, it was the quickest of the day.

"Good question — and you were right to be puzzled. Short answer, my first reply used a wrong assumption"

Thanks ChatGPT. That was basic trig. Cant wait till you do that wrong for someone trusting who cant see you screwed up

"The two solutions are
1. Physically reasonable: C-H = 1.045A and Br-C-H = 111.326
2. Mathematical (large, probably non-physical) root:
C-H = 3.023A and Br-C-H = 56.553"

That looked better, and could even be true, but that wasnt what it had said before. "Why is the answer now different?" he typed

72s later, the black box spoke back "No" it claimed, "There are two mathematical solutions. One is chemically reasonable, the other is an extraneous (very long bond) solution."

Maybe the experiment or my initial analysis was wrong, thought the scientist, before reading on...

"Nice little geometry puzzle — done" said chatGPT after thinking for 1m54s, "Your bond distance is 0.8065A and the angle is 127.626" it claimed.

"Not bloody likely" thought the scientist who knew that a 0.8A C-H bond was way too short. "Is this the only solution?" he asked ChatGPT

He had the C-Br bond length and the Br...Br and H...H bond distances and he knew he could just do trig to work out the rest. "But trig is boring" he sighed, and turned to the magic black box of chatGPT to save him having to dig out pen and paper. "Gimmi the C-H length and H-C-Br angle" he demanded