Thermal ionization

Thermal ionization happens when things get really hot, like when you hold your hand to a fire. When something gets really hot, the little particles that it's made of start to shake around a lot and get so excited or "energized" that some of them will lose an electron. It's like when you get really excited and start jumping up and down, you might lose a shoe or something!

An electron is a tiny particle that flies around the outside of an atom. When an atom loses an electron, it becomes positively charged because it now has more protons (positively charged particles) than electrons. This positively charged atom is called an ion. So, when things get really hot, they can lose electrons and become ions through thermal ionization!

Scientists use thermal ionization to study the properties of different atoms, like how heavy they are or what they're made of. They do this by first turning the atoms into ions using thermal ionization. Then, they use a special machine called a mass spectrometer to measure the mass or weight of the ions.

So, when things get really hot, they can lose electrons and become ions through thermal ionization, which is like when you get so excited that you lose a shoe! Scientists use thermal ionization to study atoms and figure out what they're made of.