Complex sentence: The alkaline earth metals are a group of chemical elements in the periodic table with very similar properties: they are all shiny, silvery-white, somewhat reactive metals at standard temperature and pressure and readily lose their two outermost electrons to form cations with charge +2.
Split into simpler sentences: The alkaline earth metals are a group of chemical elements in the periodic table with very similar properties. They are all shiny, silvery-white, somewhat reactive metals at standard temperature and pressure and readily lose their two outermost electrons to form cations with charge +2.