How the LHC works - pretty basically

Someone said to me: "Okay, the LHC may be the Doomsday Device, but how does it work?"

How does it work, well, that's pretty easy: Shoot a stash of pink balls to yellow tube and have them crash into a glass tube. Stick a battery and a magnet to the tube and the pink balls will mysteriously turn blue, and they crash .That's all folks.

Pretty simple and unexciting stuff for a 30 billion dollar gadget ain't it?