Final answer:
The term for numbers that appear in the chemical formulas of compounds is 'subscripts,' which indicate the number of atoms of each element in a molecule, while 'coefficients' are used in chemical equations to denote the number of molecules or moles of substances involved in the reaction.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term for numbers that appear in the chemical formulas of some compounds are subscripts. Subscripts are used to indicate the number of atoms of an element present in a molecule.
For instance, in the compound carbon dioxide, the formula is CO₂, where the '2' is a subscript representing two atoms of oxygen. In contrast, coefficients are numbers placed in front of the formulas to show how many molecules or moles of a substance are involved in a reaction.
Unlike subscripts, coefficients can be changed to balance a chemical equation, while subscripts are fixed parts of the chemical formulas and cannot be altered without changing the identity of the substance.