Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
English Channel
Summary
The English Channel, also known as simply the Channel (or historically as the British Channel), is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Southern England from northern France. It links to the southern part of the North Sea by the Strait of Dover at its northeastern end. It is the busiest shipping area in the world.
It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to at its narrowest in the Strait of Dover. It is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some .
The Channel was a key factor in Britain becoming a naval superpower and has been utilised by Britain as a natural defence mechanism by which many would-be invasions, such as the Napoleonic Wars and those of Adolf Hitler in World War II, were halted.
The population around the English Channel is predominantly located on the English coast and the major languages spoken in this region are English and French.
The name first appears in Roman sources as Oceanus Britannicus (or Mare Britannicum, meaning the British Ocean or British Sea). Variations of this term were used by influential writers such as Ptolemy, and remained popular with British and continental authors well into the modern era. Other Latin names for the sea include Oceanus Gallicus (the Gaulish Ocean) which was used by Isidore of Seville in the sixth century.
The term British Sea is still used by speakers of Cornish and Breton, with the sea known to them as Mor Bretannek in and Mor Breizh respectively. While it is likely that these names derive from the Latin term, it is possible that they predate the arrival of the Romans in the area. The modern Welsh is often given as Môr Udd (the Lord's/Prince's Sea); however, this name originally described both the Channel and the North Sea combined.
Anglo-Saxon texts make reference to the sea as Sūð-sǣ ('South Sea'), but this term fell out of favour, as later English authors followed the same conventions as their Latin and Norman contemporaries. One English name that did persist was the Narrow Seas, a collective term for the channel and North Sea.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related concepts (260)
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles.
Continental Europe
Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous mainland of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by some, simply as the Continent. When Eurasia is regarded as a single continent, Europe is treated as a subcontinent, and called the European subcontinent.
English Channel
The English Channel, also known as simply the Channel (or historically as the British Channel), is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Southern England from northern France. It links to the southern part of the North Sea by the Strait of Dover at its northeastern end. It is the busiest shipping area in the world. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to at its narrowest in the Strait of Dover. It is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some .
Related courses (9)
AR-660: SCIENCE AND SOCIETY. 7th Rencontres de l<squote/>EDAR
The 2023 edition of Les Rencontres de l'EDAR invites doctoral students to reflect on the social and "operational" value of research, referring to their own experience as young scholars - whether this
AR-616: EDAR thesis writing workshop
The workshop will equip participants with practical skills necessary to make thesis writing smoother and better organized. Main issues
covered are: getting started, structure and argumentation, time m
AR-649: Post-extraction territories in transition
The Seminar proposes a European and transatlantic dialogue around the questions of the social and ecological transition (post-carbon) of marginal spaces, and territories of exploitation as the ancient
Related lectures (53)
Dose Management in Electron Microscopy
Explores the challenges and solutions for managing electron dose in microscopy, emphasizing the importance of accurate dose tracking and analysis.
Lecture: Shannon
Covers the basics of information theory, focusing on Shannon's setting and channel transmission.
Convolutional Networks: Overview and Architecture
Covers the motivation and architecture of convolutional networks, from LeNet to AlexNet.