The relative number of elements and compounds in a chemical equation are represented by either coefficients, subscripts, charges of phase symbols. I think it's coefficients, but is this right?

Question

My other question is that if you start a reaction with four molecules containing a total of 40 atoms, and the reaction ends with eight molecules how many atoms would there be? I said 20, but I wanted to check this with jiskha since this is my first type of these problems.

Answer 1

I think the intent of question 1 is for the answer to be coefficients.
For question 2, doesn't an equation balance when the number of atoms on the left side equals the number of atoms on the right side? The molecules don't need to balance but the atoms must balance.