Why do you have to use paper or kerosene oil to start fire in wood or coal

  The ignition temperature of wood or coal is very high, as it requires too much of time to get heated before burning. We use paper or kerosene to start fire because they have low ignition temperature which helps to catch fire immediately and helps the wood or the coal to reach its required ignition temperature.

Explanation:

alkaline metals are lithium, sodium, rubidium, potassium, cesium and francium.

alkali metals have electronegativity from 0.7 to 1, lowest in periodic table of elements, which means that alkali metals (i group in periodic table) has positive oxidation number in compounds.

electronegativity is a chemical property that describes the tendency of an atom to attract a shared pair of electrons towards itself.

alkaline metals (far left in main group) have lowest ionizations energy and easy remove valence electrons,

for example, potassium is the alkali metal and has a single valence electron in the outer electron shell.

electron configuration of potassium is: ₁₉k 1s²2s²2p⁶3s²3p⁶4s¹.

they can not exist alone in nature, because they are very reactive.