How do apache processes interact?

Hi, this isn't really a configuration question, but hopefully someone
here will be able to help me.

Using "ps" I can see that apache has a parent process that spawns
several children. I would like to know more about how these processes
interact. For example, I'm curious about:

* how does the parent delegate requests to the children?
* what happens if I HUP the parent while requests are coming in? Are
requests queued or lost?
* how does the picture change if I throw a CGI or FastCGI application
in the mix?

Can anyone point me to some documentation along these lines? I've
looked on apache.org, fastcgi.com, and google, but I couldn't find what
I was looking for.

Thanks,
Ed