science

Red Canal

Red Canal is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Red Canal rather than just read about it. In short: Red Canal (Russian: Красный канал, romanized: Krasny kanal) was an eighteenth-century waterway in Saint Petersburg. Built between 1711 and 1719, it was part of a series of canals dug to improve the drainage of the marshy areas of the city.

Key takeaways

Red Canal belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Red Canal to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Red Canal from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Red Canal (Russian: Красный канал, romanized: Krasny kanal) was an eighteenth-century waterway in Saint Petersburg. Built between 1711 and 1719, it was part of a series of canals dug to improve the drainage of the marshy areas of the city. The canal was one of two connecting the Moyka River and the Neva River in the area of what is now the Field of Mars. Opened in the presence of Peter the Great and Tsarina Catherine in 1719, the canal became a popular site for the nobility to construct large townhouses. By the 1770s the canal was no longer required for its original purpose, and with the expansion of buildings across the Neva embankment, the canal was filled in. A stone bridge built over the canal in 1768 was transferred to the Winter Canal, and survives today as the First Winter Bridge.

History Digging of the canal began in 1711, running between the Moyka River and the Neva River for the purpose of draining the surrounding marshy areas. It was one of two canals dug in the area between 1711 and 1721. The other, later known as the Swan Canal, was dug parallel to the Red Canal along a shallow swampy river called the Lebedinka (Russian: Лебединка). Together the two canals created an island, enclosing a roughly rectangular parcel of land, initially called simply Pustoi (Russian: Пустой), meaning "Empty" - after the trees that grew here were felled, and from the 1720s, the "Great Meadow" (Russian: Большой Луг), and in the present, the Field of Mars. The Red Canal was officially opened on 21 October 1719, in the presence of Peter the Great and Tsarina Catherine. During its early years the canal was spanned by a wooden drawbridge. From 1738 it became known as the Red Canal, after the nearby Red Bridge, now Theatre Bridge and part of the Tripartite Bridge across the Moyka. There was a small canal basin in the area of what is now Millionnaya Street. The second post house in the city was built close to the Red Canal's junction with the Neva in 1715, but burned down in 1735. With the completion of the Red Canal, the western edge of the Big Meadow became a popular site for the nobility to construct large townhouses. Those that settled in the area included Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, Alexander Rumyantsev, Adam Veyde, and Pavel Yaguzhinsky, and Peter the Great's daughter, Elizabeth Petrovna. In 1768, a single-span stone arched bridge was built to carry Bolshaya Nemetskaya Street, now Millionnaya Street, over the canal. The bridge was designed by Yury Felten and I. G. Rossi, with its construction supervised by engineer T. I. Nasonov.

Antonio Rinaldi's Marble Palace was built to the west of the Red Canal between 1768 and 1785, with work beginning on the palace's service wing in the 1780 to a design by Peter Yegorov. Rinaldi had separated the palace's main building from the canal by means of a decorative wall, but the canal crossed the proposed site of the service wing. With the canal no longer necessary for drainage purposes, it was filled in in the late 1770s to allow the construction of the wing to begin. With the filling of the canal, the meadow ceased to be an island. The stone bridge crossing the former canal was dismantled between 1783 and 1784 and delivered in pieces to the nearby Winter Canal, where it was rebuilt. It survives today as the First Winter Bridge.

References

Illustrations

Red Canal: The Red Canal on a 1737 map of the city. The canal runs to the left of the leftmost line of trees in the centre, the location of the present-day Field of Mars. — The Red Canal on a 1737 map of the city. The canal runs to the left of the leftmost line of trees in the centre, the location of the present-day Field of Mars.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Red Canal

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Red Canal claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Red Canal before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Red Canal ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Red Canal

In research: Red Canal appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Red Canal in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Red Canal is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Canals of Saint Petersburg, Canals opened in 1719, Former bodies of water, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Red Canal outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Red Canal in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Red Canal means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Red Canal out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Red Canal in simple terms?

Why does Red Canal matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Red Canal?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Red Canal.