Volatility

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 pressure
    • Volatile anaesthetics, a class of anaesthetics which evaporate or vaporize easily
    • Volatile substance abuse, the abuse of household inhalants containing volatile compounds
    • Volatile oil, also known as essential oil, an oil derived from plants with aromatic compounds used in cosmetic and flavoring industries
• Relative volatility, a measure of vapor pressures of the components in a liquid mixture
• Volatile acid/Volatile acidity, a term used inconsisitenly across the fields of winemaking, wastewater treatment, physiology, and other fields
• 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

• Volatile variables, variables that can be changed by an external process
• Volatile memory, memory that lasts only while the power is on (and thus would be lost after a restart)
• Volatility (memory forensics), an open source memory forensics tool

Other uses

• Volatility (finance), degree of variation over time
• Volatiles, the volatile compounds of magma (mostly water vapor) that affect the appearance and strength of volcanoes
• Stochastic volatility, in the mathematical theory of probability
• 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
• Volatile Games, a video games maker
• Volatile (A Hero A Fake album), 2008
• Volatile (The Lime Spiders album), 1988