I am working on my graduation project and one part of it is to simulate the motion of a rigid body in 3D space. I can use either already written physics engine or to write it myself. It's quite an interesting challenge for me, so I would like to do it myself. I am able to use either C++ or Java for programming (prefer C++). I am using Mac OS X and Debian 7.

Could you suggest any guides or tutorials how to do it, can't find it anywhere... More precisely, I need a very simple engine, without collision detection, and many other things that I do not know, I just need to calculate the forces and move my body, depending on the resultant force.

If you think that this task is still very difficult or there is no such tutorial, please suggest me some good and simple engine.