What happens when you put a plastic plate in a 350 degree oven?

So today I was making brownies for my roommates' bake sale on Monday. I mixed the batter and was pouring it into three metal cake pans when I noticed that smoke was coming from one of the burners on our stove. "Um...why is our burner smoking?" I asked.
Cassie looked up from her studies. "Is something in the oven?"
"Well, the oven's preheating," I answered, "but there's nothing in th-- .....Oh crap."
It was then that I remembered that Brittany, our other roommate, had left the waffles she had made that morning on a plastic plate in the then-cool oven. So what did I do? Well, first I turned off the oven. And then I went for my camera of course. We successfully rescued many of the waffles, but as you can see, the plate had turned into its own form of modern art.


Here we see Brittany displaying the art as Cassie scrapes at the oven rack in the background. (Actually there wasn't much plastic stuck on the rack itself. Most of it had dripped onto the heavy duty foil we had put on the bottom of the oven when we first moved in.)

Thank goodness we had foil on the bottom of the oven! We were able to just take this part out and throw it away.

Here are Brittany and Cassie looking sadly at the hot oven rack and melted plate, which we put outside to cool off.
Brittany: "Darn it Angela, that was my 50 cent plate!" :)

Me looking at the rack and plate, thinking, "hmmm maybe next time I should check the oven before I turn it on..."

Ah, the adventures of college life. :)