Mr Holmes rigged a fuse between three glass jars filled with a potent chemical mixture that would burn at such a high temperature that it could not be put out with water, he said.

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The other established approach is to take two wafers of silicon, coat each with a thin layer of glass on one side (which is done by baking them in oxygen), and then fuse them together to produce a silicon-glass-silicon sandwich.

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Secondly, if it enters a jet engine the intense heat of the engine can fuse it to the interior of the engine with a caking of hot glass, which ultimately can cause the engine to cut out completely.

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