Depending on your level of experience, "Physical Modeling in MATLAB" may be useful. It was written by Allen Downey, one of my professors at Olin College, as the textbook for our introductory math/physics course, which involves many projects in modeling physical systems in MATLAB. The course is taken by all students, so no programming experience is assumed.
http://www.greenteapress.com/matlab/
The textbook is free as a PDF, and you can buy a paper copy very inexpensively. Maybe it will help!