What is meant by an empirical formula of a compound?
What is meant by an empirical formula of a compound?

Answer:

According to chemistry, the empirical formula of a chemical compound is the simplest positive integer ratio of all of the atoms that are present in the complex.  

As a basic illustration of this principle, the empirical formula of sulfur monoxide, or SO, would simply be SO, as would the empirical formula of disulfur dioxide, S_2O_2, which would also be SO in both cases. Consequently, sulphur monoxide and disulphur dioxide, both compounds containing sulphur and oxygen, have the same empirical formula as one another.

They do not, however, have the same molecular formulae, which are used to represent how many atoms there are in each molecule of a chemical compound.