Volatility or volatile may refer to:

Chemistry

Volatility (chemistry) In chemistry, volatility is a material quality which describes how readily a substance vaporizes. At a given temperature and pressure, a substance with high volatility is more likely to exist as a vapour, while a substance with low volatility ...

, a measuring tendency of a substance or liquid to vaporize easily **

Volatile organic compound Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic compounds that have a high vapor pressure at room temperature. They are common and exist in a variety of settings and products, not limited to Indoor mold, house mold, Upholstery, upholstered furnitur ...

s, organic or carbon compounds that can evaporate at normal temperature and pressure ***

Volatile anaesthetic An inhalational anesthetic is a chemical compound possessing general anesthetic properties that is delivered via inhalation. They are administered through a face mask, laryngeal mask airway or tracheal tube connected to an anesthetic vaporiser ...

s, a class of anaesthetics which evaporate or vaporize easily ***

Volatile substance abuse Inhalants are a broad range of household and industrial chemicals whose volatile vapors or pressurized gases can be concentrated and breathed in via the nose or mouth to produce Substance intoxication, intoxication, in a manner not intended by ...

, the abuse of household inhalants containing volatile compounds *** Volatile oil, also known as

essential oil An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile (easily evaporated at normal temperatures) chemical compounds from plants. Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils, aetheroleum, or simply as the ...

, an oil derived from plants with aromatic compounds used in cosmetic and flavoring industries *

Relative volatility Relative volatility is a measure comparing the vapor pressures of the components in a liquid mixture of chemicals. This quantity is widely used in designing large industrial distillation processes. In effect, it indicates the ease or difficulty of ...

, a measure of vapor pressures of the components in a liquid mixture *

Volatile acid In chemistry, the terms volatile acid (or volatile fatty acid (VFA)) and volatile acidity (VA) are used somewhat differently in various application areas. Wine In wine chemistry, the volatile acids are those that can be separated from wine throug ...

/Volatile acidity, a term used inconsisitenly across the fields of winemaking, wastewater treatment, physiology, and other fields *

Volatile (astrogeology) Volatiles are the group of chemical elements and chemical compounds that can be readily vaporized. In contrast with volatiles, elements and compounds that are not readily vaporized are known as refractory substances. On planet Earth, the term ...

, a group of compounds with low boiling points that are associated with a planet's or moon's crust and atmosphere

Computer science

Volatile variable In computer programming, a variable is said to be ''volatile'' if its value can be read or modified asynchronously by something other than the current thread of execution. The value of a volatile variable may spontaneously change for reasons s ...

s, variables that can be changed by an external process *

Volatile memory Volatile memory, in contrast to non-volatile memory, is computer memory that requires power to maintain the stored information; it retains its contents while powered on but when the power is interrupted, the stored data is quickly lost. Volatile ...

, memory that lasts only while the power is on (and thus would be lost after a restart) *

Volatility (memory forensics) Volatility is an open-source memory forensics framework for incident response and malware analysis. It is written in Python and supports Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating s ...

, an open source memory forensics tool

Other uses

Volatility (finance) In finance, volatility (usually denoted by "sigma, σ") is the Variability (statistics), degree of variation of a trading price series over time, usually measured by the standard deviation of logarithmic returns. Historic volatility measures a t ...

, degree of variation over time *

Volatiles Volatility or volatile may refer to: Chemistry * Volatility (chemistry), a measuring tendency of a substance or liquid to vaporize easily ** Volatile organic compounds, organic or carbon compounds that can evaporate at normal temperature and pre ...

, the volatile compounds of magma (mostly water vapor) that affect the appearance and strength of volcanoes *

Stochastic volatility In statistics, stochastic volatility models are those in which the variance of a stochastic process is itself randomly distributed. They are used in the field of mathematical finance to evaluate derivative securities, such as options. The name ...

, in the mathematical theory of probability *

Pedersen index The Pedersen index is a measure of political volatility in party systems. It was described by Mogens Pedersen in a paper published in 1979 entitled ''The Dynamics of European Party Systems: Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility''. Pedersen ...

, a measure of electoral volatility in political party systems *One of the components of the set of phenomena known as

volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity VUCA is an acronym based on the leadership theories of Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, to describe or to reflect on the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity of general conditions and situations. The U.S. Army War College introduced ...

Volatile Games Blitz Games Studios Limited was a British video game developer based in Leamington Spa. Founded in 1990 by the Oliver Twins, who ran the company until its closure in 2013, it is best known for producing games such as ''The Fairly OddParents'', ...

, a video games maker * ''Volatile'' (A Hero A Fake album), 2008 * ''Volatile'' (The Lime Spiders album), 1988 {{disambiguation