A bottle. Is it because of the gases
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Short answer is yes, because of the gas.
Any container filled with water and placed in the freezer will rupture. The ice will expand and eventually break the container. However, they don’t violently explode like carbonated drinks will. The reason a soda explodes in the freezer is the same reason it explodes when shaking it: rapid release of the dissolved gases. Once the can ruptures the contents are no longer under pressure, and the dissolved carbon dioxide is free to enter the gas phase again as bubbles.
Another important factor at play here are nucleation sites. Bubbles need nucleation points in order to form: without them no bubbles will form. In the lab, it can be dangerous to boil water in glassware because the glass is too smooth, and can cause the water to become super heated. To combat this, we use a boiling chip to provide a site for the air bubbles to form.
When you shake up a can of soda, some of the air from the top of the can gets trapped as small bubbles on the sides of the can, providing small nucleation sites for the CO2. That’s why tapping on the sides “disarms” a shaken can of soda and it can be opened without exploding! With a can placed in the freezer, the ice that forms before the can ruptures provides lots of nucleation sites.
So, putting it all together, the ice crystals pierce the can, releasing the pressure and providing nucleation sites for a rapid and forceful expulsion of the soda!
Edit: typos
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