How do particle colliders detect quarks and subatomic particles?

[cameron marical]

i dont see how any device we have today could do such a feat, everything that we arent experimenting with and use in our technology is too big of particles to detect such small amounts of mass, so how do they detect thge collisions scattered particles after the event?

 

Thanks.

[timo]

You do not have detectors telling you "there was a pion here". You measure different properties of the stuff coming out of the collision and reconstruct the event from that. For different detector types see for example Wikipedia. Experiments like ATLAS consist of different types of detectors that work together. http://www.physicsmasterclasses.org/exercises/hands-on-cern/ani/det_atlas/endview.swf is an interactive point&click adventure which looks like a nice toy to play around and try to understand it a bit.

[cameron marical]

I see. I read a page on the Fermilab Particle Detector, i understand now.

 

http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/virtualtour/index.html

 

Although, once found what is inside quarks {if there is anything} than wont it eventually just get too small for things to be detected and the odds of any particles that small would hit anywhere other than in the giant empty space of an atom be too great?