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 is ...

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

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 u ...

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

Volatiles 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 *

Volatile organic compound Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic compounds that have a high vapour pressure at room temperature. High vapor pressure correlates with a low boiling point, which relates to the number of the sample's molecules in the surrounding air, a ...

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 can be delivered via inhalation. They are administered through a face mask, laryngeal mask airway or tracheal tube connected to an anesthetic vapori ...

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 intoxication, in a manner not intended by the manufacturer. They ...

, 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 o ...

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

Volatile acidity A wine fault or defect is an unpleasant characteristic of a wine often resulting from poor winemaking practices or storage conditions, and leading to wine spoilage. Many of the compounds that cause wine faults are already naturally present in wine ...

, a term used in wine making to indicate an unacceptably high level of an acid or vinegar

Computer science

Volatile variable In computer programming, particularly in the C, C++, C#, and Java programming languages, the volatile keyword indicates that a value may change between different accesses, even if it does not appear to be modified. This keyword prevents an opti ...

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 ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like oper ...

, an open source memory forensics tool

Other uses

Volatility (finance) In finance, volatility (usually denoted by ''σ'') is the degree of variation of a trading price series over time, usually measured by the standard deviation of logarithmic returns. Historic volatility measures a time series of past market price ...

, a measure of the risk in a financial instrument *

, 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, a measure of electoral volatility in political party systems *

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