To sort the list, quicksort uses a divide and conquer strategy. It choses a pivot (colored red), then puts everything smaller than the pivot to the left of it, and everything bigger than the pivot to the right of it, effectively splitting the list in half. Those halves are called sublists. It than sorts the sublists in the same way, by choosing a pivot, and putting everything else on the correct side of the pivot, splitting the sublist in half to form two smaller sublists. It keeps splitting sublists in half until everything in the list is its own unique sublist. At this point the list is sorted, because quicksort creates sublists in a way that makes sure all the sublists are sorted. The item currently being read is colored green.
