Why is Charcoal such an excellent adsorbent?
Activated charcoal is a great adsorbent because of it's huge surface area. While it doesn't bind very many ions/atoms/molecules per surface area (which is the characteristic of a 'good' adsorbent), due to very big surface area per unit of mass it can adsorb a lot of particles. Actually, process of 'activating' charcoal is designed to maximize the surface area to mass ratio.