Nematic liquid crystals are ubiquitous in our daily lives thanks to their widespread adoption in display technology. The nematic phase is characterised by its constituent molecules (or particles) having -on average -a preferred direction of orientation, which is termed the director. As with virtually all fluid phases of matter at equilibrium, the bulk nematic liquid crystals we encounter dayto-day are apolar, irrespective of their molecular polarity. In other words, despite their bulk orientational order, the constituent particles display no preference for orientation parallel or antiparallel to the director (Fig ), and molecules have an equal probability of being aligned parallel or antiparallel to the director.