Volatility or volatile may refer to:
Chemistry
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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
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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
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Volatile anaesthetics, a class of anaesthetics which evaporate or vaporize easily
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Volatile substance abuse, 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
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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
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Volatile acid/Volatile acidity, a term used inconsisitenly across the fields of winemaking, wastewater treatment, physiology, and other fields
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Volatile (astrogeology), a group of compounds with low boiling points that are associated with a planet's or moon's crust and atmosphere
Computer science
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Volatile variables, variables that can be changed by an external process
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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)
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Volatility (memory forensics), an open source memory forensics tool
Other uses
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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
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Volatiles, the volatile compounds of magma (mostly water vapor) that affect the appearance and strength of volcanoes
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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
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Pedersen index, 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
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Volatile Games, a video games maker
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''Volatile'' (A Hero A Fake album), 2008
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''Volatile'' (The Lime Spiders album), 1988
{{disambiguation