Milk Grenades,
as I said earlier the parallel plate detectors are made from 2, 0.7 mm and 5, 0.55 mm-thick glass plates separated by 6, 0.22 mm gaps.
Follow me......an electric potential of 14 kV is applied across the plates right? (you can't argue this)
The chambers operate in a highly electro-negative gas, primarily Freon r134a. Charged particles traversing the plates create electron avalanches in the gas gaps which are seen in 3.15 cm x 6.3 cm copper pick-up pads.
The signals are amplified, discriminated, then recorded by the CERN HPTDC chip with a 25 ps least-significant-bit precision..........its that simple yo.